The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks 3

This week I had a hard time finding a book I would like, so I have to write about “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” for one more week. The book is a true story about Henrietta Lacks whose cells were taken from her when she was diagnosed with cancer. The only thing wrong was that the doctors never told her or her family that they were using her cells. The articles in the newspapers used false names, anything to prevent her from knowing about it. But these cells cured many diseases including polio. But the book also tells the story of her family’s life after she is in the hospital. But not only does it follow them, and the author gathering the information, the book also tells the scientific story of her cell. In science class, the other week, we had a class debate about whether it was fair to test on animals for research. This relates to the story in the way that Henrietta was used for research and had no opinion as well as many other people including her family. I think that it is wrong not to tell them, but it is right to use them as long as it causes no harm.

The book shows a scene where the author, Rebecca Skloot, is at the house of Henrietta’s direct family to gather information for the book. She describes in detail everything she had heard and seen, which gives the reader a really good understanding of what the family is like. They get into this whole argument about how hospitals liked to use African Americans for testing because in those days, segregation was just beginning to wear off. They talk about how Johns Hopkins, the medical school and hospital where Henrietta was kept, liked to take African Americans off of the street to test on them and often killed them. One striking thing that was said was that sometimes they would perform dissections on these people when they were alive so they could study the body in the action. They would not use anesthesia.

I completely agree with Henrietta’s family in that the way that the hospitals used African Americans for research was unfair. I feel like that if they had gotten informed consent on the investigations from the people than it would be alright. But the scientist would inject the live cancer cells from Henrietta into people without them knowing to test whether they affected them. This made people have cancer. First of all, they had no idea what they were being injected with. It’s not like the doctors didn’t tell them, they lied about what they were doing which makes me even more mad. Second of all, it severly harmed many of them and sometimes killed them. I just cannot believe that people would do something like this. And, to go on top of that, the doctors were making sure the cells were not harmful so they could protect themselves while studying the cells. That is really selfish.

I love the book “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” a lot, but some things that have nothing to do with the story make me very unhappy. I think that, although there are laws about this nowadays, I think it is important now to protect the rights of animals. If they could talk, and you asked them if they want to put cream in their eyes that would make them blind but make people have shiny skin, they would say “no”. But they cannot talk so they cannot tell you that they don’t want this. But is that a good reason to test on them?