The Obligation To Endure, By Rachel Carson

In The Meaning of Life, Richard Taylor argues that meaningless lives our lives that consist of a repetitive cycle of struggles that do not give us any purpose. Taylor describes a meaningful life as one that has a purpose, and is creative and unique to that specific person. Also, the meaningful life is lived in a good and just manner. In The Meanings of Lives, Susan Wolf argues lives that are not involved in an activity that brings positive value are meaningless lives. A person that has a meaningless life by the standards of Taylor can still have a life that is going well for them. Their well-being is not dependent on whether they have a meaningful life or not. Wolf believes that meaningfulness is an important factor in a person’s well-being. Well-being is present when a person’s is living a life that is going positive according to themselves. A person who lives a life that is meaningless as a result of being repetitive and pointless can still have a life that is going well for them.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot is an amazingly captivating book about an African American woman who died in 1951 of cervical cancer, whose cells became the first in history to be able to survive and replicate endlessly outside of the human body. Skloot covers the true story on the impact Henrietta’s cells, also known as HeLa cells, had on her family and the world of science. Although I was intrigued by the entire book and the concept of HeLa cells, what truly provoked me to want to further research the topic was the injustice Henrietta’s family was forced to face, and how they learned to cope with it.

In Rebecca Skloot’s book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (2010), the main purpose for Skloot to write the book was to inform the world and tell the story of Henrietta Lacks. How her cells were taken without neither her or her family’s consent, still being used today, helping to cure diseases and being grown in petri dishes all over the world. It tells the story of the HeLa cells and it puts a face to the name and a family, showing that this person saved millions of people without any acknowledgement or recommendation that this was an actual person who did have a life and was not just cells. Rebecca Skloot’s intended audience are those who are ready to listen, it is a book for anybody to pick up and not be expected to know what everything

Much of society uses technology for many tasks that include communication, school, jobs, etc. Most people think that using technology has its negative effects such as physical and emotional. Those can be generally related to the biography, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot due to the fact that Henrietta’s family was not acknowledged about using the cells of Henrietta without their permission or Henriettas. Another example from Unit 3 would be Prometheus: The Friend of Man which shows that when Prometheus, the main protagonist, spends time on Earth helping man give them the fire from the god, Jupiter. The two units The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and Prometheus: The Friend of Man both support the following idea about the responsibility people have developing new technologies.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot is composed of three sections: life, death, and immortality. The first section, life, focuses on Henrietta’s life; from birth to death. Her struggles with cancer, her husband and children, and her strong personality are all included in this section. The second section, death, focuses on the events that happened after Henrietta herself passed away. The official cause of her death being blood poisoning from a buildup of toxins, but there is a much larger story here. The final section, immortality, focuses on the use of Henrietta’s cells, called HeLa cells, after the first two letters of Henrietta’s first and last names, and how they are still being used today, over sixty years later. Throughout the entire book the timeline is never from one year to the next. Skloot puts the book together in such a way that, although the timeline isn’t in order, the book still makes chronological sense. Through sections and chapters, Skloot paints a picture, not only of Henrietta’s life, but also of how she and her cells have influenced modern medicine.

In “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” by Rebecca Skloot, an african american women, Henrietta Lack was detected with cervical cancer. Cervical cancer is a tumor in the cervix located in the lower part of the uterus. Lacks was hospitalized and put on treatment to hopefully cure the cancerous tumor. Henrietta’s cells, also known as HeLa cells, were taken from her without her consent which became a breakthrough to modern medicine. HeLa cells are said to be rare, instead of dying they multiply and are currently still today being used to find cures to various diseases. On October 4,1951 Lacks died of cervical cancer. If “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” had a hero it would be Henrietta Lacks. Not only was Henrietta the hero, but her cells are as well.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot is a book written about a woman who acquired a diagnosis of cervical cancer. In 1951, Henrietta sought out help from The Johns Hopkins hospital and Dr. George Gey. Gey is over the tissue research. Gey’s hopes were to create an immortal line of human cells for scientific experimentation. Gey took a sample of Henrietta's tissue to be cultured without her knowledge.

Thievery from voracious doctors. Discrimination from a segregated society. Suffering for the remainder of her life. Each of these obstacles like a bombshell, altering the life of a poor black woman named Henrietta Lacks. In the New York Times bestseller novel The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, author Rebecca Skloot reveals the untold and often unknown story behind the woman whose cells helped create some of the most profound contributions in medical history. Born and raised in Virginia in 1920, Lacks was a typical black southerner, growing up impoverished and recovering from the aftermath of a previous generation of slavery. It wasn’t until later in her adulthood when she was diagnosed with a severe case of cervical cancer, which rapidly deteriorated her body as doctors applied intensive doses of radium treatments. Before she passed away in 1951, doctors removed a sample of her tumor from her body without her or her family’s knowledge or permission. This tumor sample was crucial to the progression of medical advancements, for the cancerous cells never died in various mediums and became the first immortal human cells in history. Scientists were eager to experiment with the notorious HeLa cells. Doctors made millions selling HeLa by the vial. The Lacks family was uninformed for 25 years about Henrietta’s legendary cells, leaving them flummoxed, devastated, and outraged. One of the most pressing incidents in medical history has left the world to question concerns regarding

In The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot describes Henrietta Lacks, who strikes her interest from the first time she learns of this Lacks in her college biology class. Henrietta was an African American woman who passed away from cervical cancer in 1951. Rebecca Skloot’s biology professor, Donald Defler, explained that cancer is the result of the uncontrollable reproduction of cells. Around the time that Henrietta realized she needed to see a doctor about her unusual condition, researchers had been in the midst of of trying to make human cells reproduce in a laboratory condition, but couldn’t seem to successfully develop cells that would reproduce the way they wanted them to, until the HeLa cell, named after their donor Henrietta Lacks. Henrietta’s story interested Skloot so much that she could not go on without knowing Lacks’s real story, which was relatively unheard of in this time. Most information on Henrietta did not even know her real name, as a result, Lacks was often referred to as Helen Lane.

The book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot is the result of years of research done by Skloot on an African American woman with cervical cancer named Henrietta Lacks. Cells from Lacks’ tumor are taken and experimented on without her knowledge. These cells, known as HeLa cells, are the first immortal human cells ever grown. The topic of HeLa cells is the topic of many controversial debates. Despite the fact that her cells are regarded as, “one of the most important advancements in the last hundred years” (4), little is actually known about the woman behind the cells. Skloot sets out on a mission to change this fact and share the story of the woman from whom the cells originate and her family as they deal with the effects these cells have on them.

Rebecca Skloot is the author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks who details her experience in uncovering the hidden scientific and familial issues of the woman who caused a revolution in cancer research. The cells taken from Henrietta during her early stages of cervical cancer were discovered to be everlasting and scientists across the world took part in experimenting with them. Her family, however, was given no financial compensation and barely knew anything about the cells at the time and when Skloot turns to the family for clarification of the story, they are mostly guarded and act defensively when asked personal questions or about Henrietta. The family was poor and the lifetime of abuse from the scientific world.

Grady McGlawn Mr. Sanders Anatomy 8 December 2015 Introduction In “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks”, by Rebecca Skloot, is about an older woman named Henrietta. Henrietta was an older woman who had kind of a rough background in her childhood. Her childhood made her a little tougher as she got older, for example, she had a bump that was bothering her but for some reason she refused to get it checked out by the doctor. When Henrietta finally decided to get it checked out she learned that it was something that the doctor wasn’t too sure about so she then made a few more trips which later on led to the doctor telling her she had cervical cancer.

“The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” by Rebecca Skloot, is the story of a young mother who is diagnosed and treated for cervical cancer. During her cancer treatment, her cells are taken without her consent for research. These cells, known as HeLa, go on to provide many important scientific discoveries. However, the cells are very controversial as her family is never compensated or given the proper information about what these cells are used for. Henrietta’s cancer is found late and severe. She dies, leaving behind a husband, five children, and her immortal HeLa cell line.

People easily view themselves as the main character of their story. We experience our lives from the first person perspective, our own perspective. We are the center of every single one of our experiences. But what about everyone else? After all, we cannot be the main characters of every life story. We think very little if at all about what sort of life the barista serving us coffee has, or the daily woes that plague a fast food worker serving us burgers at a drive-through. We have a tendency to view others as functions of how they benefit us. Rebecca Skloot’s nonfiction novel The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a vivid illustration of this spirit of abstraction. The scientific community and the national media used Henrietta and her family as a commodity, exploiting them for their own benefit, forgetting that behind the cancer cells they took, lies a human being. This abuse was caused by an irresponsible sense of altruistic authority, journalistic encroachment and the phenomenon of groupthink.

Imagine growing up in a place where everyone is poor, there is only one road going through the town, one school, and one store. Now imagine having a tragic ancestral history of people who were taken advantage of, massacred, and forced into the slums of society. For the people who live in this place, this means there are little to no resources or opportunities to prosper and make a better life. Also everyone there is being dragged down by a history of abuse and these misfortunes are still affecting them in present day. The book The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie follows a young Indian boy through his experiences on an Indian reservation. in the short stories Alexie demonstrates the good, the bad, and the ugly of what goes on native American reservations. There is a deep longing of men to be warriors, because they have a need to get ahead of their tragic history, and survive the harsh societies that try to keep them down, as second class citizens.