the immortal life of henrietta lacks pdf online

#The immortal life of henrietta lacks pdf online skin

Beneath the photo, a caption says her name is “Henrietta Lacks, Helen Lane or Helen Larson.”

#The immortal life of henrietta lacks pdf online skin

Her light brown skin is smooth, her eyes still young and playful, oblivious to the tumor growing inside her - a tumor that would leave her fiveĬhildren motherless and change the future of medicine. It’s the lateġ940s and she hasn’t yet reached the age of thirty. She looks straight into the camera and smiles, hands on hips, dress suit neatly pressed, lips painted deep red. There’s a photo on my wall of a woman I’ve never met, its left corner torn and patched together with tape. Related Article Credit Lacks Family, via The Henrietta Lacks Foundation Text 1: Excerpt from the prologue of “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” by Rebecca Skloot How should decisions about access to genetic data be made, and who should be making those decisions?Īctivity Sheets: As students read and discuss, they might take notes using one or more of the three graphic organizers (PDFs) we have created for our Text to Text feature:.What can the story of Henrietta Lacks teach us about consent and privacy in an age of increasing access to genetic data?.Skloot wrote after the genome was sequenced, can be used with students just beginning the book as well as with those who haveĪlready read it - or can simply serve as an introduction to the story and the issues it raises. Our Text-to-Text pairing, which combines the book’s prologue with a 2013 Op-Ed Ms. They have never received any payment for Henrietta Lacks’s cells or any compensation from the profits that have come from the research done using her cells. After a protracted fight, the family won the right to make the genome available only to scientists who apply, as well as to serve on a working group that will help review the applications. In 2013, her descendants learned her genes had been sequenced and that the genome was made available to the public. For 62 years, her family has been left out of the decision-making about that research.

Than 74,000 studies, many of which have yielded profound insights into cell biology, vaccines, in vitro fertilization and cancer.īut Henrietta Lacks, who was poor, black and uneducated, never consented to her cells’ being studied. Lacks’s own life - her cells have been the subject of more In the 62 years since - twice as long as Ms. Soon the cells, called HeLa cells, were being shipped from Baltimore around the world. In a lab, a feat no human cells had achieved before.

They later discovered that the cells could thrive Not long before her death, doctors removed some of her tumor cells. Henrietta Lacks was only 31 when she died of cervical cancer in 1951 in a Baltimore hospital.

It’sĪ story inextricably connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we’re made of.”įor those not familiar with the background, a 2013 Times article summarized it this way: As the book’s publisher describes it, it tells a “riveting story of the collision between ethics, race, and medicine of scientific discovery and faith healing and of a daughter consumed with questions about the mother she never knew. “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” has been assigned or suggested as a “common read” in thousands of high schools and colleges around the country. Through the lens of Rebecca Skloot’s 2010 book, “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” and a related 2013 Op-Ed. Of Henrietta Lacks, and for more and more patients and their families, these are pressing ethical questions that need answers and clear policies.įor this Text to Text, we invite students to explore the science and ethics of using human cells and tissue for medical research How private should your genetic information be? Can scientific researchers and pharmaceutical companies use your cells for the sake of scientific advancement? These are not just hypothetical questions. Teaching ideas based on New York Times content.