The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks Part One

Henrietta has ten children and is bothered by swelling in her cervix, so she goes to the hospital for a biopsy. Henrietta lived with her cousin and grandfather, had a child with Day, whom he later married, and moved to Maryland. Henrietta's biopsy shows that she has stage I cervical cancer, and she is treated with radium patches in her cervix while cells from her tumor are cultured in the study. Henrietta's cancer cells, dubbed 'Hela,' were transported to the lab and put in an incubator. Lacks resumes her normal life, Sadie is taken to a hospital for the insane, and Henrietta's becomes infertile due to radiotherapy treatment. The Hela Cancer Control Symposium is hosted by Roland Pattillo. Gey distributed Henrietta's live cancer cells to labs around the world for study. Henrietta's condition worsens and she suffers miserably. Skloot goes to turner station to find more information about Henrietta. Skloot travels to Clover and finds people there believe either spirits or doctors killed Henrietta. Tumors had spread throughout Henrietta's body, she was in great pain and died on October 4, 1951.
Chapter 10 reveals that people from Henrietta's hometown Clover were poor, and none of her relatives understood what she was suffering from. People from the neighborhood loved Henrietta and they believed that her sickness was either caused by the doctors at Hopkins or some supernatural forces.
In Chapter 2 ‘Clover', racism is manifested at the marketplace between white and black farmers. Blacks were considered inferior and lesser beings than the white people, and hence they were not allowed to stay together with the whites. White farmers slept in private rooms while black farmers stayed in the basement of the warehouse with animals brought to the market (Skloot 24). In Chapter 3 ‘Diagnosis and Treatment', it is revealed that doctors such as TeLinde often used patients who came for free treatment in public hospitals as research subjects. The public hospitals such as Hopkins served a large indigent black people who were used for research without their knowledge or consent (Skloot 32).
 
Work Cited

Skloot, Rebecca. "The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks, the sequel." New York Times 23 (2013).