The Immortal Life Of Henrietta's Cancerous Cells

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In the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebbeca Skoolt, who’s a journalist, was in college when she learns information about Henrietta Lacks, and African American woman, who died in 1951, from cervical cancer. Some years later, she heard about the name again and was so curious that she decided to do research on this woman. Rebecca later learns that Henrietta’s cancerous cells were the first to become the first human cell line, called HeLa. After doing some research Rebecca later learned that in the 21 century, HeLa made some of the most important discoveries. Even so, little was known about Henrietta Lacks so that’s when Rebecca decides to engage with the closest person to Henrietta, her daughter Deborah. The story continues to say that Henrietta …show more content…
As the popularity of HeLa grows so does the curiosity of it, so a new article is written on it and instead of the patient’s name being Henrietta Lacks it is instead replaced with Helen Lane.
During their mother’s absences Deborah and her sibling experiences abuse from their cousin who later had to take and raise them, Deborah’s youngest brother Joe gets it the worst and later ends up becoming a juvenile delinquent. As Deborah and her other siblings begin having a family of their own, Joe is charged with murder and is sentenced to 15 years in prison where he then converts his religion to Islam and changes his name to Zakariyaa.
Chester Southam was reprimanded by the medical board when it was learned that injection of HeLa and other cancer cells into other patients without their knowledge nor consent, was occurring. Once Rebecca finally meets Day, Sonny, and Lawrence she discovers that they are angry because thousands of different people are profiting from Henrietta’s cell while they’re still living in poverty. The family are later tested at Hopkins Hospital, but they don’t know why, Deborah fears that it is to see if she and the others have internal problems and would die like

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