Hela Cells Argumentative Essay

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HeLa Cells: Science Phenomena Yet No Recognition Her name was Henrietta Lacks and she was a woman who died nearly 60 years ago and lies in an unmarked grave in a cemetery in Virginia. Henrietta Lacks was a poor African American tobacco farmer who died at the age of 31 due to cervical cancer. She became one of the most important unknown figures in medicine without even knowing it. Before her death, she was being treated at Johns Hopkins Hospital for her cancer and without her knowing, doctors took some of her cells for research. She went in during a time where scientists were trying to grow human cells and culture; thus they were taking cells from anybody they could. Scientists had been trying for years to keep human cells alive in the lab but none of them lasted very long until Henrietta Lacks' cells were taken at the hospital. While she was under anesthesia, they took a small sample of her tumor and sent it down the hall to George Guy, the head of tissue culture research. He had been trying to grow human cells…show more content…
No one in the Lacks family had been informed of the existence of their mother's cells until a researcher called in the early 1970s wanting to test the family. With this news, the family felt confused and scared. One of the family members described feeling to be the same as being raped, where they did it and nobody told them. The reporter even interprets that the “devil” in this whole study was Johns Hopkins University. One interviewee, Dr. Daniel Ford, states that, "Johns Hopkins needs to do a better job of communicating with the family and of recognizing it" but he also states that using Henrietta's genes was a standard practice at the time. He states that if we go back to that time, "there was more of a focus on the science and discovery with less consideration of what it meant to that individual; that they were going to be a part of the scientific process whether they knew it or

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