What is Mines & Golden Community Conversations?
Mines and the Golden Anti-Racism Collective have joined together in community to host conversations about race, ethics, intersectionality, and equity. As a kickoff event, we would like to host a discussion based off of a historic story that underscores the controversial ethical past of science and racial injustices that were consequences of mass discovery.
“The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” by Rebecca Skloot follows the story of Lack’s cell line (HeLa) which have been used in over 70,000 publications without her permission. The story intersects race, medicine, ethics and equity in a way that makes it an ideal foundation for a community conversation about these issues.
Story of Henrietta
What is The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks about?
The creation of HeLa cell line occurred in in 1951, the year their donor, Henrietta Lacks, died of cervical cancer. Taken at John Hopkins University, one of the only hospitals in the region which would serve black individuals. Almost immediately, the cells were reproduced and sent to many institutions across the United States and the world, places which might have refused treatment to Henrietta, herself.
Henrietta Lacks History
Audio
Continued History
Henrietta’s cells were the first “immortal cell line”, the first cells to be grown and reproduced on a mass scale in a lab. This was just the first momentous scientific discovery they are part of. The cells helped developments on the Polio Vaccine, cancer treatment, and blood disorders. They have been included in over 70,000 publications and were involved with three Nobel Prizes
The darker side of this history is that further specimens from her husband and children were used without informed consent
Is this case unique?:
The experimentation on POC without full or in the case of Henrietta Lacks any, disclosure is not unique. Early birth control studies done on Puerto Rican woman and the Tuskegee Syphilis study are two other circumstances of lack of disclosure by the medical community
Why is this important?:
As mentioned in the book, BIPOC still have less access to adequate medical treatment, including mental health, regardless of income
Newspaper Articles & Books
- Her cells made her immortal
An article from the Baltimore Sun, published in 1997.
- After 60 years of anonymity, Henrietta Lacks has a headstone
Henrietta Lacks was originally buried in an unmarked grave. Soon after the release of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Dr. Roland Pattillo and his wife donated headstones for Henrietta and her daughter Elsie.
Get a copy of the book
Arthur Lakes Library owns two copies of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * "The story of modern medicine and bioethics--and, indeed, race relations--is refracted beautifully, and movingly."--Entertainment Weekly NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE FROM HBO® STARRING OPRAH WINFREY AND ROSE BYRNE * ONE OF THE "MOST INFLUENTIAL" (CNN), "DEFINING" (LITHUB), AND "BEST" (THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER) BOOKS OF THE DECADE * WINNER OF THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE HEARTLAND PRIZE FOR NONFICTION NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review * Entertainment Weekly * O: The Oprah Magazine * NPR * Financial Times * New York * Independent (U.K.) * Times (U.K.) * Publishers Weekly * Library Journal * Kirkus Reviews * Booklist * Globe and Mail Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells--taken without her knowledge--became one of the most important tools in medicine: The first "immortal" human cells grown in culture, which are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb's effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions. Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave. Henrietta's family did not learn of her "immortality" until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists investigating HeLa began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. And though the cells had launched a multimillion-dollar industry that sells human biological materials, her family never saw any of the profits. As Rebecca Skloot so brilliantly shows, the story of the Lacks family--past and present--is 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 are made of. Over the decade it took to uncover this story, Rebecca became enmeshed in the lives of the Lacks family--especially Henrietta's daughter Deborah. Deborah was consumed with questions: Had scientists cloned her mother? Had they killed her to harvest her cells? And if her mother was so important to medicine, why couldn't her children afford health insurance? Intimate in feeling, astonishing in scope, and impossible to put down, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks captures the beauty and drama of scientific discovery, as well as its human consequences.
ISBN: 9781400052172Publication Date: 2010-02-02
