The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks - Essay Example

12 July Book Report- The immortal life of Henrietta lacks The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is more of a critique of science than merely a reflection of the Lacks family. Scientists who have been experimenting upon HeLa cells tend not to relate them to Henrietta because this makes their job easier. The plot is a combination of several themes including illiteracy, gender, race, and poverty. In the contemporary research and development, there is a noticeable difference between the extent to which the remains of educated white women are associated with them and the extent to which illiterate black women are remembered or credited for their medical remains.

All of the themes of the story best integrate into one scene from 2001 in which Deborah and her brother are led by the Austrian research, Christoph Lengauer into his lab in the basement. Ass they warm up HeLa’s frozen test tubes in their palms and see the microscopic division of cells, the children come across their mother for the first time after her death. Deborah is emotionally moved by this discovery and says, “You’re famous…Just nobody knows it” (Skloot). The book is about the injustice done by doctors to Henrietta Lacks.

Henrietta approached Johns Hopkins in order to get her cancer treated, but the surgeon cut samples of the malignancy along with healthy cervical tissues from her body without her consent and approval. The director of research at Hopkins related to tissue culture, George Gey found a remarkable difference of the behavior of cells extracted from Henrietta’s body from his other collections. The cells, when placed in the culture, showed rapid growth and would double every one day. They were named “HeLa”.

Their reproduction never terminated ever since. They have facilitated a lot of medical research in the past and have led to the development of cures for many diseases like polio, Parkinson’s disease, leukemia, and influenza. The main characters of the book include Henrietta who was a tobacco farmer of the African American origin. By the time she turned 30 in 1951, she was diagnosed with cervical cancer. Eight months later, she passed away. Henrietta was a married woman who mothered five children.

Elsie, the eldest child, was mute and deaf who was left in an institution after the death of Henrietta. Elsie could not survive in the horrible conditions for long and soon passed away. Her husband raised up the other four children in extreme poverty after Henrietta’s death. Deborah was Henrietta’s daughter that maintained an inquisitive manner towards the approaching scientists and researchers and was also shown the HeLa cells along with her brother in Christoph Lengauer’s lab. Several ethical issues can be identified in the matter under consideration, one of them being the association of cells with a white lady whose name was Helen Lane.

Reason for this change in name originates in the culture that has historically, not been favorable for the African Americans. This is a clear violation of ownership rights of Henrietta’s family. Henrietta’s family never got to learn that Henrietta’s cells had been taken until 20 years of her death, when her family was approached by the scientists. Besides, the family did not see any share of the multimillion dollar worth of profit made from the research upon cells. Nonetheless, the biggest ethical issue is enclosed in Deborah’s words: But I always have thought it was strange, if our mother cells done so much for medicine, how come her family can’t afford to see no doctors?

Don’t make no sense. People got rich off my mother without us even knowin about them takin her cells, now we don’t get a dime. I used to get so mad about that to where it made me sick and I had to tale pills. But I don’t got it in me no more to fight. I just want to know who my mother was. (Skloot 9). The issue is not that Henrietta’s cells were taken, but that they were taken without permission. In a vast majority of cases, when the concerned party’s consent has been asked, the relatives have allowed the permission for research purposes, and so would the family of Henrietta have, had they been asked.

In the contemporary society, the social safety net is quite functional. Paradoxically, in cases complicated to the level as under consideration, the family does not enjoy any privileges. If the courts are involved, the substitutes they make for the social safety nets are extremely poor. On the other hand, litigation consumes a lot of time and most often, turns out fruitless. Even if the suffering party is compensated at the end, the money is not worth the effort and time invested into it. Hence, ethics requires leaders to make sure that the contributors are benefited for their donations.

Works Cited: Skloot, Rebecca. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. NY: Random House Ltd., 2010. Print.