Essay On Henrietta Lacks

In the book The Immortal life of Henrietta Lacks written by Rebecca Skloot, she explains that Henrietta was a remarkable individual who is an icon for science. Henrietta Lacks was a person whom everyone enjoyed to be around but she was covered with tumors that were cancerous. Henrietta Lacks was a woman with five children, a husband, living in Baltimore where she went to John Hopkins Hospital. Hopkins hospital was a facility where the blacks, people who could not afford health insurance could go and get treatment. During Henrietta’s visit, her cells taken from her and made immortal without any consent from her or the family, and their name was HeLa. The mental illness patients taken to the Crownsville Hospital where Henrietta’s eldest daughter once were, for the illness of being deaf (aphasia- which means not being able to speak in technical terms). In the articles Ugly Past of U.S Human
written by Charles Lidz, Ph.D. The components used will help explain the similarities between Henrietta Lacks and mental illness patients. The comparison between Henrietta Lacks and mental illness patients have many of the same qualities and unethical violations. Although there are many differences between cancer and mental illness, both patients of the black race went to hospitals of different kinds and observed. John Hopkins was a hospital for anyone where HeLa cells were first made which changed the science world completely. HeLa cells were immortal cancerous cells, which helped, make the polio vaccine, and exposed a study of measles, mumps and many other things that would effects a person tremendously as described in Skloot’s book The Immortal life of Henrietta Lacks. The laboratories around the world had at least one vial of HeLa. The family of Henrietta Lacks knew nothing about her being the owner of the cells and received no compensation for what the cells did for the world. In the article “Tragic…Crownsville State Hospital’s Legacy” it states that many