Brian Davidson Jr

Schmidt

English 11

4/30

Henrietta Lacks Pt 1 Summary

This essay will be entirely based on the first section of a biography about henrietta lacks,

she was a very important black woman in early history. Discoveries of henriettas human body

has made an impact in the modern world and so has her story so I'm going to tell the first part of

her story to you.

Henrietta Lacks lived in New York City in like the mid 1900s. Henrietta died of cancer at

Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore Maryland. Something happened to Henrietta during her

treatment that she didn't know about and neither did her family. We find out that the scientist had

taken and studied her cells, Henriettas cells did not die when given adequate nutrition and

oxygen. Her cells multiplied, this made her cells the first ever immortal cells that scientist could

keep in a laboratory. When Henrietta Lacks died she was buried in an unmarked grave.As i said

Henriettas cells live on, and were named from the first two letters of her first and last name:

HeLa. HeLa cells were able to let the scientist study all effects of steroids, chemotherapy drugs,

hormones, vitamins and environmental stress; they infected them with tuberculosis, salmonella,

and the bacterium that causes vaginitis (pg. 102). Today there are so many HeLa cells in

existence that they are estimated to have a combined weight of more than 50 million metric

tons(Skloot). Many discoveries have been made with her cells, also many of peoples jobs have

advanced, hundreds of many peoples lives have been saved because of the HeLa cells and also a
lots of money has been made. What is really messed up though is that even after so much time

has passed since she died, Lacks family had no idea what had been done with her cells and who

made money from it. The only reason that her family had taken her to that hospital was because

at the time all hospitals basically were segregated and wouldn't help any black people, but the

one she was taken too had sympathy and took care of black people more than respectably then

others, and this is what happened to her and her family, information was kept a secret from the

beholder and the worst part money was gained for the people that discovered it and not to the

person it came from or their poor family. Also in part one we learned about how many African

Americans that had syphilis were used for medical experimentation, the scientists didn't care if

the africans died or not and they continued to study diseases they gave them to see if they would

live, or die. He repeated this process with about a dozen other cancer patients. He told them he

was testing their immune systems; he said nothing about injecting them with someone else's

malignant cells. (128). Also a less important, but still part of Henrietta Lacks we learned she

had a daughter who was born with epilepsy and also was a mute which meant she didn't talk, and

also that henrietta married her cousin.

Rebecca Skloot tells us the first part of her ten years of research on Lacks and her family,

and my opinion on wether it was appropriate for how they treated Lacks is the scientist had no

respect for the side affects it would have on Lacks, which was she would be fertile after the

treatment. They also had no resect for what her family would think after they make money off of

Lacks cells from her body, and meanwhile they didn't even say anything to anyone about why

they kept this secret. She should have been treated better and she should have been taken care of
the right way. Doctors examined her inside and out, pressing her stomach, inserting new

catheters into her bladder, fingers into her vagina and anus, needles into her veins. (40).
 Works cited

Skloot, Rebecca. The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks. New York: Broadway , 2017. Print.

"HeLa Cells: A New Chapter in An Enduring Story." National Institutes of Health. U.S.

Department of Health and Human Services, 07 Aug. 2013. Web. 30 Apr. 2017.