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Henrietta Lacks Research Paper

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Henrietta Lacks was an African American woman, born August 1, 1920. She grew up in a small town in Virginia, with both her parents and other siblings. Years later, Lacks’ mother passed away while giving birth, and after her death her father gathered the family and moved them to another town in Virginia. Once the family relocated, Henrietta and her siblings were distributed to different relatives. She lived with her grandfather and worked on a tobacco farm for several years. Around the age of 14, Henrietta and her then boyfriend, David Lacks, had their first child together, then in 1939, her daughter was born. Later, Henrietta and David were married and decided to move to Maryland. While in Maryland, Henrietta and David decided to have more …show more content…
She was bleeding outside of her menstrual cycle, and decided to do a self-examination. During this self-examination, she found a lump on her cervix and new something was not right. A local doctor told her a very general diagnosis, and she knew it wasn’t correct. Her next option was to make a longer drive to Johns Hopkins Hospital. Once there, Lacks received many tests and examinations, doctors knew something wasn’t right. Doctors contacted Henrietta with the results of her tests, which showed that she did have stage 1 of cervical cancer. The tumor began to grow rapidly, nothing like the doctors had ever seen. Dr. TeLinde decided he wanted to do his own work in the lab to figure out what they were seeing. To do this, he removed and tested Henrietta’s cells in the lab without her knowledge. After many failed attempts of trying to grow human cells in the lab, they were surprised to see that Henrietta Lacks’ cells were able to thrive and divide in the lab. They had become so frustrated with all the other failed attempts, but that quickly changed when they noticed that Henrietta’s cells had doubled in size in 24 hours. Doctors could not believe what was happening and wanted others to see what he had found, and had problem with sharing the cells with them ALL. Everyone wanted to see these cells and what they were capable

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