The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks Book Review
Rebecca Skloot’s story The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is an amazing novel that ventures into what happened with a few cervical cells in 1951 and how they changed the world. In 1951 Henrietta Lacks went to the hospital. It was found that she was suffering from cervical cancer. Without consent from Henrietta or providing her with any information of their actions her doctors took a biopsy of cells from her cervix and sent them off. The cells belonging to Henrietta became known as the HeLa cells and accomplished something scientist had been hoping to achieve with cells for a long time. Henrietta’s cells were infinitely multiplying and it was a miraculous breakthrough. HeLa cells left and continue to leave unprecedented and life-changing ripples in the scientific world in every realm from polio vaccinations to HeLa cells being shot into space. However, the main point of Skloot’s journey into Henrietta’s story is the grave ethical misconduct that occurred when it came to Henrietta’s medical care. Ethics are an essential and integral part of research and must be maintained to ensure responsible, respectful and moral research. Skloot started writing the story when she felt a sense of unease regarding the origins of the HeLa cells and began to investigate the truth of the events that had unfolded with Henrietta’s cells. Skloot holds a B.S in Biological Sciences and a M.F.A in Creative Nonfiction she spent all of her career specializing in scientific writing focused on medicine. This list of credentials made her a great candidate to write a book about the medical injustices that occurred in regard to Henrietta as a patient. Skloot wrote a sequel to this book as well as a few more works about Henrietta as well as a piece an individual’s rights when it comes to research and what role those right play when it comes to what power we believe or give to researchers.
As a Psychology major I would recommend this book to anyone interested in human rights/equality, ethical research and/or the injustices committed against African-Americans, especially those living in low-income communities. I study ethics regularly in almost every course requires in the Psychology degree, in this day and age, ethics come hand in hand with research. It was not always this way. The Stanford prison experiment, the Milgram experiment and the ‘Little Albert’ experiment all from the past were all unethical studies done in the name of science. These studies all elicited prolonged mental stress amongst its participants without full knowledge of what they were agreeing to in advance.
This was also the case of Henrietta, she never gave her consent, she was never notified of the purposed of the research, and she was never asked if she wished to participate or would rather decline. For the doctors to take away those rights is unconscionable. It is important to read Henrietta’s story and see where the ethics of her doctors blurred lines and abused power for their own purposes. Her story is not only one of ethical research and its utmost necessity and value in the scientific world but, it is also a story of racial injustice. As a lower-class African-American woman Henrietta was afforded far fewer rights than her white, rich, and female counterparts. Medical care in the 50’s broadly did not function with any sense of equality when it came to white and black patients. Let alone, the still ever relevant problem of women not being treated equally in hospitals. To this day there are dozens of stories of women being told their pain isn’t real, being told by their physicians that some part of what their saying is false, and actually physically suffering at the hands of physicians who in critical moments make choices against their patients will. These ongoing issues of the inequality in the medical system for not only women but women of color are a prevalent and massive problem. The standardization of our medical system is something that would benefit many and is something that should be of higher importance in this county. Malpractice is not only something we are more than capable of reducing or even basically ending, it is also something that should not exist when we have come this far in terms of both medicine and equal rights in the eyes of the law. The film we watched for class “3 and ½ minutes 10 bullets” may have been about shootings and men but it displayed a lot of important information about social norm and how they depict African-Americans and how those norms affect their treatment. Henrietta was stereotyped and judged due to her class and race and was then not afforded the same luxuries as someone who was of a higher class and of racially white. Those same feelings depicted in the film of wanting equality for the misdoings against Jordan ring true with Henrietta’s family and her remaining loved ones. Gregory Mantsios’s piece Class in America discussed how there was found to be an “inverse relationship between social class and health”. Mantsios not only discusses how lower-class usually results in a higher risk of disease but also usually results in a higher likelihood that they will receive a lower quality of care. Knowing this, it is ever more apparent how class and race played massive parts in the treatment of Henrietta and the ethicality of her care.
Henrietta’s situation featured a variety of -ism’s we have discussed in class. The issue of her treatment touches upon classism, racism, sexism and more. Skloot does a great job addressing these –ism’s in her work. She delved into the issue of how the lower-class African-American family members of Henrietta were completely disregarded until they seemed useful to researchers and how initially they were not provided the respect and information regarding their ancestor they deserved. She delves into the ethical issues as well as the injustices against Henrietta that occurred when they took her cervical cells without her permission and she unpacks the biases and discrimination that occurred in that judgment.
I think if I had to pick a shortcoming, though I don’t think this was a critical error. I would say that I think the book could have profited by not being written by a person of privilege. It can often be found that stories can benefit in their telling when told by someone who personally identifies with the misfortunes of that particular unprivileged races’ past. I find those stories to sound less like a report and more authentically identifying with the struggle experienced racially by both the author and the main subject.
However, that is not something that would hold me back from recommending this book. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a captivating read that I thoroughly enjoyed. It highlights a woman who was so integral to many of the medical innovation in the last 60 years yet also so unknown by the masses of lives she has bettered and/or saved. The story unravels the twisted and unethical treatment of Henrietta that went on the become the first moments in a long path of medical discoveries. It is not only a great read but something that should be discussed in all of our history classes, Henrietta is Black hero and she deserves that place in history.