Looking at the woman in the picture what do you see? I see a well dressed, well poised, happy African American woman in a very nice dress suit. The way her hands are on her hips and her feet are parted give an air of confidence and self-assurance. Looking at her feet it seems as if she has a size smaller than she needs. And going up to her waist it seems as if she is a little plump as also shown in her face. However, her legs looks thin maybe resulting from always walking and working. But look at her face. At first glance the smile looks nothing more than a smile portraying happiness. Look at it again closer and not just at the smile but at her eyes too. Now I might just be overseeing things but to me the smile looks forced because of the way her eyes are sort of drooped. Maybe it was just awkward for her keeping the smile while the photo was taken. Maybe that is her natural smile. Maybe this is an illusion since she is looking down. But maybe there is something behind it. And when reading the story there truly is.

We started off the book with the quote from Elie Wiesel and to me it meant that every person is unique because each has a story. And it came as such a shock to discover the big one to Henrietta Lacks.

A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words

I must say that reading the first few pages of this book, unlike other assigned books, had me drawn into the novel as a reader. There was just something about it that made reading the pages much easier and interesting. Or it could be just the exhilarating story of this women who i can relate to in some ways going through such a traumatizing experience, which actually is factual and occurred in real life that catches my attention.

The case about doctors retrieving her cells without her permission is something i qualify about. Yes it was wrong to take advantage of her illiteracy but she also became the reason such a medically advancing discovery came about. Yes she died, but her research of her cells did accomplish to save many other lives. Despite of what her result was, due to her cells still alive today, her name will forever be known and precedented to scientists all over therefore immortalizing her existence; which i see no harm in.

The House of the Scorpion is a novel written by Nancy Farmer that tells the story of Matteo Alacran, a young clone who was made for the sole purpose of giving his organs to the original 148 year old Matteo Alacran (known as El Patron), a powerful drug lord who wishes to live as long as possible. A little backstory before i talk about the issue at hand. Matteo (clone) lives in the country of Opium, a strip of land between the United States and Mexico in which  El Patron rules over. The people in the country are mostly immigrants who tried and failed to cross the border, and were implanted with a chip in their brain to make them work without having any free will of their own.

There are many Bioethical issues presented in the novel, the first one being clone rights and which begets the question, are clones people and should they have rights? When you read the book and see the way that the people treat him once they found out he was a clone, it sounds brutal and disgusting. one character in the Alacran House calls him a “filthy beast” and decides that he should be treated as so, locking him in a room with sawdust to use as litter, and such abusive treatment. The Alacran all move to different wings of the house because of the fear that he can contaminate them. This treatment seems harsh to us because we think that people shouldn’t be treated like animals.

I always saw Matt as a person, as a character, and that is what the author aimed to do. Whenever we see Matt, he has emotions and the curiosity of a child, as he is one for the first part of the book. he seems like a normal person and the only difference was that he had a barcode tattoo on his foor. Other than that, there was nothing different about it.

Now the other bioethical issue at hand is the Immigrant workers. These people are forced to work with no free will because of the computer chip in their brain. they are forced to work until they die, and they don’t do anything  unless they are told to. taking someones free will away is no different from killing them in my opinion.

If you are into the idea of clones and that section of bioethics  then this is the book for you! it deals with all those things and it really shows Matteo for what he is, a clone who has ambitions and wants and emotions, just like you or me.

Now the connection to the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks lies in the idea of what can you use people for. Matteo was bred and used to be harvested for his organs to provide life for El Patron. Henrietta Lack’s cervical cancer cells where harvested to create advances for medical science. My question for you, LC13, is does it make a difference what you use the harvesting for? do the ends really justify the means?

At the Barnes & Nobles counter I was not thrilled with spending $16 on a book called “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks”. I didn’t want to spend my money on a book that I wouldn’t read. However after just the first few pages on the book, I found my self quite interested, amazed by myself that i was not only reading but actually enjoying the reading. Rebecca Skloot’s way of telling the story of both an interesting topic in science and the story of Henrietta Lacks keeps me entertained. Throughout the first few chapters she constantly hops back between the story of Henrietta’s life and the topic of her cells making a significance contribution to science, which keeps me from getting bored of the reading.

Overall im truly excited for the rest of the book. Taking into account how long the book is, I’m interested on how Skloot will use this much length to describe the story of Henrietta Lacks and Hela, which are her immortal cells. Knowing that the death of Henrietta is approaching in the book, my guess is that the majority of the book will talk about Hela, which I’m excited to hear more about. My interest in Hela come from the fact that it is an interesting topic and that Hela is a very controversial  topic. I have a feeling that Rebecca Skloot will not disappoint me and continue to have me interested as I read “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks”.

I agree with Lukas, this book is turning out to be much more interesting than I anticipated. After reading Brooklyn over the summer, I’m not gonna lie, I was very much not looking forward to reading this book. But after the salesperson in my local Barnes and Noble spoke about this book with such excitement and after reading some of the review excerpts on the flaps of the book, I must say, this is one very good book.

Now I’ve only read about 70 pages, but every time I pick it up I keep reading much more than I anticipated. Her life story in the early parts of the first chapter to me read like a movie. In my mind I could easily envision how this would play out on the silver screen. And now with seeing how her doctors treated her, and how her family wasn’t compensated for all the advances in medicine literally taken from Ms. Lacks’ cells shocks me. This isn’t some work of fiction, this is something that actually happened in real life.

Anyways, I’m actually excited to see what happens next.

After reading “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” i couldn’t help noticing that the reading was actually interesting. The author Rebecca Skloot was able captivate the reader using details and different perspective making it a much easier read than say a book like “Brooklyn”. What made it even more interesting was the issues that surrounded the Henrietta Lacks situation

In the case of Henrietta I believe the doctor’s abused the signed the patients consent and perform unethical procedures. First of all the doctors failed to inform the patient with any details of the procedure or the biopsy that was planned. I feel like the patient should have the right to know what is going to happen to her. I mean if it was me and i was on the surgery table i would like to know what the doctors are going to be doing to me. In addition they never mentioned to Henrietta the level of risk that comes with the procedure. Radium is very dangerous and potentially deadly and without informing her of that they just stuck it inside her and went ok we got what we wanted and our job is done. It just seemed in general that the doctor couldn’t care less about her which bothered me severely. I don’t know what do you think?

After reading “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” a thought came to me, ethics have changed vastly over the past hundred years. So much so that racial diversity has become a much more accepted phenomenon since the 1940’s. But one thing that has not changed is the ethical value of a human life. So has humanities value of ethics in general been lessened?

The average person believes it to be unethical to do wrong to another. But in the nonfictional novel the doctors saw no problem with taking tissue from Henrietta Lacks without her permission to pursue their own interests, some might say that “it did no harm to Henrietta so why would it be wrong?” this is an example of the decrease in humanities value of ethics because those who believe this also know that it is still considered unethical to use a person, whether you want to use em in order to further your own goals and you don’t see how it causes harm to them it is still unethical. Just cause you don’t see how it causes harm to someone does not mean that it doesn’t cause harm to them. Henrietta’s family was devastated when they found out what doctors had done so harm was done. This has become very common among people although they know its wrong. This is especially seen with large companies that do not care for the individual but instead care for their own profits. In conclusion human value of ethics is slowly lessening and we need to ask ourselves, what would humanity turn into if ethics were ever to fade away completely?

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is much more interesting then i expected it to be. This is probably because 95% of the books I had to read during my high school career were absolutely awful. This book actually kept me engaged both because of the topic is pretty interesting and the way it is written keeps me interested.

The only real complaint I have is that I dont like books that jump around with the timeline, but now that Im writing this and thinking about it the story probably wouldnt really be as interesting if it the timeline was how it really happened. If that were the case it would simply be a biography followed by the author writing out the process by which she wrote the book, which would be boring.