The Immortal

Theme of Bioethics in Ball and Wolfe’s (2017) The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks For three decades, scientists had been looking for human cells that could be successfully multiplied outside the human body and much of their efforts failed until 1951, when doctors in the Johns Hopkins Medical Center in Baltimore collected a cancerous tissue sample from a colored woman, Henrietta Lacks, without her consent. Her tissue sample is significant as it allowed scientists to conduct tests on human cells…

to understand the reasons why somebody does something. Trusting that person’s intentions is just about all we’d be able to do about it. As Rebecca Skloot continued her journey throughout a story she was breaking down, the story she wrote named The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, she said many things about herself that really gave the reader a pretty good perspective of who she is. Skloot is the is the author of the book herself though; She does hold the power to persuade her readers into…

prologue of her book, “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. “I first learned about HeLa cells and the woman behind them in 1988, thirty-seven years after her death, when I was sixteen and sitting in a community college biology class. My instructor, Donald Defler, a gnomish balding man, paced at the front of the lecture hall and flipped on an overhead projector. He pointed to two diagrams that appeared on the wall behind him,” writes Skloot in the prologue of her book “The Immortal Life of…

In the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot first presents us with various descriptions about HeLa cells, such as “immortal” and “never dies”. Thus, these distinct attributes that tremendously prolonged the life of of HeLa cells make the cells become one of the most significant tools in medical fields, such as cancer treatment, vaccine development, etc. As a person who learned biology in the past, Skloot knew the facts about HeLa cells, and they conduce to the whole world;…

culture today the same as it was 20 years ago? Do people still hold the same values important today as we did in the past? In the story The Mortal Immortal: A Tale by Mary Shelley, Shelley depicts an average man (Winzy) making his way in the world by working. Winzy is employed under a scholar who invented a potion to transform the mortal man into an immortal being, when Winzy can not resist any longer he consumes half of this magical drink. At first Winzy was over the moon excited about living…

for blacks was complete hell. They were treated very poorly by white community members, as well as government officials. The incredible story of Henrietta Lacks and her eternal cells is not a story about racism. There are several incidents in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks that refer to issues of racism, but Henrietta’s cells were not taken because of the color of her skin. Medicine in the 1950’s was no where near as advanced as it is now. Anyone that entered a hospital was a potential…

Religious faith and science coexist together with tension. One might argue that everything is in God’s plan while another will say that it is all science. In The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, the two principles did not come together for the Lacks family until the death of Henrietta Lacks and her immortal cells that forever change their lives and millions of others. Religious faith allows the Lacks family to help cope the death of Henrietta and the problems that arise after…

consent is when a person grants permission after they learn of all possible consequences and results. Not only is it unlawful to do something to a person without their knowledge, it is also unethical. People have a moral right to their body. In “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” by Rebecca Skloot, the readers learn about how things were back then, and about the many cases debating about the property of a person’s body. In my personal research, I found an article that further elaborates on…

Anna Sanders 9th Grade Biology The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks Introduction “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” by Rebecca Skloot tells the story of Henrietta Lacks and her cells (the HeLa cells). Henrietta was the mother to five children. She was the wife to David ("Day") Lacks, who was also her first cousin. She was diagnosed with cancer when she was thirty years old. She died when she was thirty-one years old. Henrietta never told her family about the “lump” she had until she…

In Skloot’s (2010) book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, the author reveals the story about the life of Henrietta Lacks, an African American woman who was diagnosed with a fast-growing cervical cancer at a young age. The cells retrieved from her cervical tumor became the first immortal cell that could survive in the lab and replicate continuously without dying. Without the consent of Henrietta Lacks and her family, these cells later became key components to the development of many…