...Rebecca Skloot explores ethical and moral controversies in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by sharing Henrietta’s story with the world by using rhetorical devices to show the transcendence of the “HeLa” cells, and creating clear images throughout the text to give an accurate narration of the events during and after Henrietta’s life. The lives of her relatives become a focus to work towards revealing to the world, the person behind the cells. The central focus of Henrietta’s life is when the “HeLa” cells were removed from her body and used for science. Being such an integral part of the story, Skloot enhances the audience’s understanding of it with her use of rhetorical devices. Without this the medical terms and processes would...
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...The existence of Rebecca Skloot as a character in her book, The Immortal life of Henrietta Lacks, provides meaningful and necessary dialog to the story that is an insight to the physiological tolls that the cells take on Deborah and her family. In “Medical Records”, it becomes clear that Deborah still does not trust Rebecca with the medical records. Deborah asks, “Who you working for? Hopkins?”, and Rebecca responds by reminding her of their last conversation they had over the same topic. The suspicion that Deborah has for Rebecca is a massive aspect of the story that displays the fears and skepticism that the Lacks family has because of the times that they were wronged by John Hopkins. Shortly after the argument cited above, Deborah agrees...
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...assey Barbeau 11/10/16 Mr. Mooney The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks Essay Skloot, Rebecca. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. New York: Broadway Books, 2010 The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is Rebecca Skloot’s debut monograph, and she has only written one other monograph since. Skloot attended Colorado State University, and received her MFA from University of Pittsburgh. Though she has only written two monographs, Skloot is the author of hundreds of essays and stories published in various magazines. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, written by Rebecca Skloot, tells the story of a young African American woman named Henrietta Lacks, who was diagnosed with cervical cancer. Though she was put through many painful medical treatments, Henrietta Lacks succumbed to her illness at the young age of 31. Unbeknown to Henrietta and her family, surgeons at John Hopkins Hospital had taken tissue from Lacks’ tumor, and sent the cells to be investigated by Dr. Gey, a researcher at John Hopkins Hospital. Despite the fact that many would consider this morally corrupt, informed consent had not yet materialized at this time, so there was no legal wrongdoing on the part of John Hopkins. Much to Dr. Gey’s surprise, Henrietta Lacks’ cells were growing astonishingly...
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...The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is uniquely arranged in a complex double plot line between Henrietta Lacks’ life story and the journey of discovery that the author, Rebecca Skloot, embarked upon in search of the truth behind HeLa (the cells of Henrietta Lacks). The narrative perspective of the work differs between both plot lines: the sections from the author’s point of view are spoken in first person, while the parts pertaining to Henrietta and her family have a third-person omniscient perspective. Beginning at Ch 29: A Village of Henriettas, the two plot lines of the novel converge, bringing together Rebecca Skloot and Henrietta’s devoted daughter, Deborah, as the two passionately collaborate to uncover the emotional shocking truth behind the mystery of HeLa. Book Context: Ch. 1-10 The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks reveals the true story of the woman from the 1940-50s who was behind the miracle HeLa cells; these cells were the first to permanently survive outside the human body and they are still alive today in laboratories across the globe. Furthermore, these HeLa cells...
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...caught wind of the book "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks", I thought it would not have been fascinating to peruse. However, when I saw the intro page of the book, it stood out enough to be noticed. I began perusing and got keener on the book, especially in Henrietta Lacks and the HeLa cells. In "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks", Rebecca Skloot discusses Henrietta Lacks and how her cells were taken without her authorization, and how her family endured a while later. Henrietta Lacks endured physically, as well as rationally and emotionally. In the wake of being determined to have cervical disease, Henrietta passed on in 1951 at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Because of the way that examination on such patient's was exceptionally...
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...are only 3 choice words that could be used to describe Rebecca Skloot’s nonfiction writing of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Henrietta, wife of David and mother of four, had cells taken from her body without her consent. The Lacks family did not know this until a much later date. Henrietta’s cells are now referred to as HeLa which is the pattern of which most doctors used to label the cells they took from patients, willing and unwilling: First two, Last Two. This hides the identity of the patient. Throughout this memoir you will be taken back and forth between 2 points of view, the story of Henrietta’s life as well as the struggles Rebecca Skloot goes through to contact and speak with the Lacks family....
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...Karen Plascencia Dr. Joe Puterbaugh English 101 11-03-12 Essay –Analysis of Rhetorical Strategies Rebecca Skloot’s book Rebecca Skloot’s book is an extraordinary and interesting book that narrates the live of Henrietta Lacks. The women who suffered from cervical cancer and later on died because of it. Doctors took out her cells without her family consents. Without knowing that those cells never die and the Doctors were getting multimillionaires. This book is really fascinating because it has several examples of how Henrietta Lacks used to live. Rebecca Skloot uses a rhetorical strategy to make this book even more real, she gives several supporting evidence when she spent few hours researching and trying to locate her family. She also, makes us feel what she feels about Henrietta Lacks and her family by explaining each moment of Henrietta’s life when she was alive and how this situation affected the family and she uses a clear tone to explain us how hard it was for Henrietta Lacks to be black and sick in those times and no getting the same treatment as whites. These strategies are: Logos, pathos and ethos. Rebecca Skloot uses logos in this book because she gives us supporting evidence about Henrietta Lacks. Since she was in school she heard about Hela cells, how they were reproducing every single minute and never die, but she was interested to know who was the person whom they took out the cells from. She asked to her teacher about the name of the person and her teacher...
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...Skloot's sweeping characterization of the HeLa story is both poetic and right on the money. It tells us exactly why Henrietta's story captured her attention in the first place. The story of Henrietta Lacks and HeLa addresses not only the issue of racial exploitation and demonization, but also that of a patient's humanity and his or her right to compassionate care and privacy. It is clever how she links the "contamination" of the cells to the "one drop" policy of racial identification. In addition, Skloot added one more story about “They didn't know that on the other side of the country, a white man named John Moore was about to begin fighting the same battle. Unlike the Lacks family, he knew who'd done what with his cells, and how much money they'd made”(198) Skloot includes the story of Moore to show how differently things could go for a patient if he or she has the privilege of knowledge and money. And in this case, race. Would John Moore's case have garnered so much attention and effort if he were poor and black? In the end it didn't matter; he lost his case. Debora told Rebecca Skloot when she knew...
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...contemporary literature, what does it mean to be “immortal”? Analyze the various ways that Henrietta and Deborah achieve immortality. Immortality is the ability to live forever, or eternal life. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is about Rebecca Skloot’s journey to write a book about Henrietta Lacks and her cervical cells, known as the immortal HeLa cells that were used after her death, without her consent, to advance medical science research. At the end of Skloot’s book she quotes Henrietta Lacks daughter Deborah, “But maybe I’ll come...
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... The Nazis of the 1930’s and 40’s committed one of the most heinous breaches of morality in history. Josef Mengele lead Nazi doctors in conducting painful and sometimes fatal experiments on captured Jews without their consent. Rebecca Skloot uses the Aristotelian rhetorical technique of pathos in the contemporary biography The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks to demonstrate how, in the 1940s, the lack of medical ethics wronged countless families and individuals as they came to seek medical attention....
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...in order to gain insight into common health care strategies and to study disparate medical conditions; yet, a large amount of controversy exists regarding patient compensation. The most famous case regarding this controversy concerns Henrietta Lacks, a patient whose cancerous cells, taken without consent, became a worldwide tool for scientific research, and led way for Biotech companies to earn billions while Henrietta and her family received nothing. In The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, the author Rebecca Skloot investigates Henrietta’s case, and includes asides of other research patients’ experiences regarding compensation. With consent now as convention, a relevant question arises in Skloot’s text: Should the research enterprise compensate patients who donate tissues for research, both in and outside of the course of medical care? This question demands reverent reflection, as the response will likely set a precedent for years to come. In order to examine whether patients in the course of medical care should receive compensation for tissue donations to research, we can turn to Skloot’s aside on John Moore. While undergoing treatment for spleen cancer, Moore’s physician found that his patient’s spleen cells were splendidly unique. In Skloot’s text, Moore states that his physician "offered to pay for the plane tickets...
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...The Immortality of Ethics in Science and Medicine Rebecca Skloot’s “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” raises a number of ethical questions through the story of a woman whose immortal cells have made and continue to make an incredible difference in the world of science and medicine. A doctor’s duty is to treat and care for patients, regardless of their race, ethnicity, and income level. In the mid-1900’s, however, few medical professionals practiced medicine in this manner. Low-income, black patients who could not afford a high standard of care were forced to seek care in facilities which often viewed them as research subjects. Henrietta Lacks sought medical care in the Johns Hopkins University Hospital where she began painfully deteriorating...
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...A poverty-stricken, black southern tobacco farmer named Henrietta Lacks became one of the most valuable cells in life itself. Being stripped of having any knowledge of her beautiful yet shocking possession, scientists claimed them as their own and referred to them as “HeLa cells”. Not only did Henrietta not know about her immortal cells, she was also medically mistreated as well as her family. The Lacks family didn’t know about Henrietta’s cells by more than twenty-five years later meanwhile they’re still indigent. Medical assistance can jeopardize our entitlement to our own bodies which are absurd. Doctors have given ill-treatment to many other simple people like Henrietta. Patients like Henrietta have faced issues with informed consent because of doctors wanting to research and gain a profit. Racial discrimination plays a factor in the lack of empathy towards patients. In "The Immortal Life of...
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...There are many reasons that Henrietta Lacks did not give informed consent. First, the form that Henrietta signed at John Hopkins gave permission for her doctors to “perform any operative procedures…that they deem necessary in the proper surgical care and treatment of _________________,” (Skloot, Immortal, pg. 31). Henrietta’s tissues were taken, but not for the purpose of treating her cancer (as it had already been diagnosed and she was about to begin radium treatments). Second, because of her racial and socio-economic status, Henrietta was vulnerable and may have felt she didn’t have much of a choice when it came to giving consent. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot is about a Southern-Christian African-American woman who has developed a deadly disease, in which she later dies of. What stands out in the book the most is how Mrs. Lacks was treated because of her ethnicity and how Skloot's race played a role in some of the treatment in the book. Reading this, I thought to myself: if Henrietta would have been white in her lifetime, she would have had a better advantage in life. If Skloot would have been African-American she probably would have emphasized racism. If both of their races would have been different, the whole perspective of the book would have changed. The treatment of African-Americans back in the day was very harsh and cruel. Henrietta Lacks was one of thousands of people that suffered a gruesome disease during a time of racial injustice...
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...Prisoners of Henrietta Lacks, and the Value of Their Fate Inquiry Question: How does Rebecca Skloot’s depiction of prisoner experiments and research change the way we think about how early medical developments were first brought to life, and who really took the risks we should credit for them? Hypothesis/Working Thesis: Considering the reduced liabilities, rights, and public outreach of prisoners in the past, using prisoners as test rats was viewed as highly unethical and forceful by many. Skloot, Rebecca. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. New York: Crown Publishers, 2010. Print. In the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot not only argues her point, but also does a great job at informing and teaching her readers the vast risks prisoners were susceptible to while being used by doctors as human guinea pigs. Skloot makes many references to different potentially deadly diseases that were injected into prisoners for further research. The public’s opinion on this happening was shocking; many thinking it was highly unethical and forceful of the doctors. Skloot makes claims about how prisoners were viewed as vulnerable inmates who were unable to give informed consent. Regardless of how the treatment was viewed, prisons and doctors did what they wanted to do in those days ranging from diseases, to chemical warfare agents, to deterring how X-raying testicles affected sperm count (Skloot 129). Throughout her study of how HeLa cells have expanded, and where they...
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