Rebecca St. James

While we had been discussing and reading about the ethical, legal, and social implications of various different cases throughout the semester, reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks allowed me to see it from a whole new perspective. While I have learned quite a bit from all the discussion, the many assigned readings, and the overabundance of bioethics reference readings, this book truly carried my attention from cover to cover, pulling me into Henrietta’s family while sneakily telling me…

Henrietta Lacks was a poor black farmer from Virginia who led a life that would be described as typical at the time. She had children when she was young, raised them to the best of her ability while working to survive. But “typical” would not be the word to describe the impact Henrietta had on the scientific world. While admitted to a hospital, a sample of tissue unwillingly taken from her tumor gave rise to one of the most important cell lines in medical advancement and research. The cells that…

The book “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” dives into the story of an African-American woman who was diagnosed with cervical cancer and died at a young age shortly after, leaving behind 5 children, a husband, and many cousins. When Henrietta was at John Hopkins being treated for her cancer, the doctors took a sliver of her tumor and cultured it to see if they could make the cell “immortal”. This all happened back in the 50’s when colored people weren’t seen as equal citizens to white people…

Robert White FA17-IN-SOC-R100-21545 20 September 2017 Book Review: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks Henrietta Lacks played a pivotal role in scientific cellular research, although she or her family wasn’t given the notoriety that they deserved. Rebecca Skloot investigates the life of Henrietta Lacks and the people that loved her dearly in her book “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.” Given Henrietta’s gifts of fortune or the lack thereof, she was born a black, deprived woman. She barely…

Suspense in The Evening and the Morning and the Night “The Evening and the Morning and the Night” is a short story by Octavia Butler. This is a short story about a girl named Lynn Mortimer who was born with a disease called Duryea-Gode disease (DGD). DGD is a genetic disease that causes adults to become self-destructive.It is caused by a drug called Hedeonco, which cures certain types of cancer. If an adult has DGD and reproduces, their child will automatically have the disease. When adults…

Henrietta Lacks was a black woman who grew up in Clover, Virginia (Zielinski). She was born in 1920 as Loretta Pleasant (Biography.com Editors), and was affectionately known as “Hennie” (Brown). She was raised by her grandfather and lived with her cousin, David Lacks (Biography.com Editors). Henrietta worked as a tobacco farmer along with her family (Zielinski), and she also sold tobacco at auctions (Brown). She attended school up until sixth grade (Brown). Henrietta and her cousin Lacks later…

Adversity in Science Cold. Death. Uncertainty of surviving. Those were the conditions of Douglas Mawson, Australian explorer investigating Antarctica for scientific research. Henrietta Lacks, a woman who had her cells taken without permission, only for scientists to find out they rapidly multiply and help studies towards illnesses (Immortal Cells, Enduring Issues). Phineas Gage was a person who had a metal rod shot through his head and lived, which helped contribute to brain science (Book and…

are a significant case; the doctors refused to discuss the taking of her cells to Lacks or Lacks family until after profit was being made from the cells taken from Lacks. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a nonfiction writing by American Rebecca Skloots that took over a…

The developments of new genetic technologies will raise some of these ethical issues that will affect the person as well as the society as the whole. In 2010 ethical issues was emerge as big controversial problem within the scientific community by Rebecca Skloot, the publisher of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lack, a book on the He-La cells and why it was morally unethical. He-La, a cervix cells from a woman named Henrietta Lack’s, a code named that world known to the first immortal human…

At Hopkins one of researchers who worked on Lack’s case was Dr. George Gey, a leader in cancer tissue culture. In order to study cancer or any other cell disease, there must be cells to study. The problem is that human cells can survive only for a short time out of the body, which makes them useless for most experiments. The truth was Dr. Gey had been doing research for decades, trying to prove the then controversial idea that growing cell from normal cervical tissue. However, the idea to grow…