Shortly after Henrietta’s death, plans were developed for a factory to mass-produce the HeLa cell line. One of Henrietta's cousins later said that Henrietta must have been trying to tell them all something that day. However, just as her coffin is being lowered into the ground, a massive storm starts up, and a powerful wind tears a roof of a barn and knocks out power. Henrietta's body is sent back to Clover, Virginia, and buried in her family's cemetery. Suddenly, Mary notices that Henrietta's toes are painted bright red, and it hits her that all the cells she's taken have come from a real woman, someone who once sat in her bathroom and carefully painted her toes. The coroner removes samples from Henrietta's body, all of them covered in hundreds of small tumors. Mary, the Gey's assistant, is nauseated at the sight of the corpse but steels herself to collect more samples. The doctors needed to obtain permission from Henrietta's living relatives someone asked Day twice, and he refused the first time but gave in the second. Henrietta dies not long afterward.Īfter Henrietta died, George Gey wanted to perform an autopsy. She tells her sister Gladys that she needs to make sure that Day takes care of the children, especially Deborah, who was only a year old when Henrietta went into the hospital. Henrietta wakes disoriented, but soon realizes where she is. Soon, Henrietta's doctors discontinue all medications except painkillers. When Rebecca interviews Emmett years later, he says that he's not surprised her cancer cells proved immortal, because her cancer was especially terrible.
Suddenly Henrietta starts wailing and convulsing with pain, and the men are hustled out. The men arrive to find Henrietta lying limply in bed with her cousin Sadie and her sister Gladys near her. She often made them food and talked to them during their lonely and difficult time in Baltimore, and they care about her. Henrietta's cousin Emmett Lacks organizes a group of his friends and coworkers to donate blood for Henrietta. She requires constant blood transfusions because her kidneys can no longer function. Henrietta's cancer continues to grow, causing her excruciating pain. Hector says he isn't sure if it was a spirit or a person who made Henrietta sick, but he's certain it wasn't natural, because cancer cells don't just keep growing after a person dies.Ĭhapter 11. Throughout this conversation, the radio blasts a recording of a local minister performing a faith healing. He claims to have seen spirits of sickness around Lacks Town, including a large hog that dragged its chains behind it.
Hector comments how odd it is that the HeLa cells are so prolific, and tells Rebecca that he thinks Henrietta's illness must be man-made or spirit-made. Most of the family doesn't remember much about her, but he does. Hector explains that he remembers Henrietta as a kind, lovely person who would take care of him when he was ill (he had permanent damage from a case of polio as a child). When she explains she's seeking to learn about Henrietta, he invites her inside. She drives around this area until a man named Hector Henry asks if she's lost. Many of the houses there are one-room shacks with gaps in the wallboards. The area across the tracks is even more run-down. She asks a lone man where Lacks Town is, and he points her across the tracks.
THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS CHAPTER SUMMARY MOVIE
The town of Clover is desolate and dilapidated-the roof of the old movie theater has caved in, most of the shops are empty. Rebecca goes to Virginia to seek the extended Lacks family. 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.Chapter 10. 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. 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.
0 kommentar(er)
