The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks Theme #2: Unethical Researchĭetermined to prove that carcinoma in situ could morph into invasive carcinoma, TeLinde embarked on an ambitious study around the time Henrietta first visited Hopkins: He and his team compiled and reviewed the medical records of every Hopkins patient in the past ten years that had been diagnosed with invasive carcinoma to see if noninvasive carcinomas had been present first. When her interview subjects use outdated terms like “colored,” she echoes their usage.) (Shortform note: Skloot uses the terminology of the historical moments she’s describing. ![]() The hospital was also segregated, with black patients confined to colored wards. It was located in East Baltimore, and its public wards reflected its community: Most of the patients were poor African-Americans unable to pay for medical care. By the 1950s, it was one of the most admired hospitals in the country. Johns Hopkins had been founded as a charity hospital in 1889. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks Theme #1: Inequality in Health Care Read about The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks’ themes. The book is as much about Henrietta Lacks and her family as it is about society and biomedical research. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks’ themes focus on racial issues and ethics in health care and research. What are The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks’ themes? What are the key issues or topics discussed throughout the book? How do the themes reflect on social issues? Like this article? Sign up for a free trial here. Shortform has the world's best summaries of books you should be reading. Winner of several awards, including the 2010 Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize for Nonfiction, the 2010 Wellcome Trust Book Prize, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Award for Excellence in Science Writing, the 2011 Audie Award for Best Non-Fiction Audiobook, and a Medical Journalists’ Association Open Book Award, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks was featured on over 60 critics’ best of the year lists.This article is an excerpt from the Shortform summary of "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot. It’s a 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. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks 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. ![]() Soon to be made into an HBO movie by Oprah Winfrey and Alan Ball, this New York Times bestseller takes readers on an extraordinary journey, from the “colored” ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s to stark white laboratories with freezers filled with HeLa cells, from Henrietta’s small, dying hometown of Clover, Virginia, to East Baltimore today, where her children and grandchildren live and struggle with the legacy of her cells. Henrietta’s cells have been bought and sold by the billions, yet she remains virtually unknown, and her family can’t afford health insurance. She was a poor black tobacco farmer whose cells-taken without her knowledge in 1951-became one of the most important tools in medicine, vital for developing the polio vaccine, cloning, gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, and more. Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa.
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