quotes from the immortal life of henrietta lacks

Quotes from the immortal life of henrietta lacks movie#

To the folks in Lacks Town, she was just simple. 'People wouldn't use words like epilepsy, mental retardation, or neurosyphilis to describe Elsie's condition until years later. This implies two things: the children learn independence and responsibility for themselves, and that some of them will grow up to be like these reckless farmers. Sounds like there aren't many good adult influences for the children on the farm. 'Night at the warehouse was a time of booze, gambling, prostitution, and occasional murders as farmers burned through their season's earnings' (pg. Of course Henrietta and her family had no choice but to farm and perform other laborious tasks for a living because of the Jim Crow era, but the constant presence of tobacco may have imposed a lasting health issue for Henrietta, especially since she was exposed to the tobacco at an early age, making her more vulnerable to harmful effects.

'They spent much of their young lives stooped in those fields, planting tobacco behind mule-drawn plows' (pg. Incest? This would obviously affect the health of their children. The treatment offered would not have changed, but the fact is that today many people are still dealing with slow-moving and imprecise diagnoses when it comes to cancer.'No one could have guessed she'd spend the rest of her life with Day-first as a cousin growing up in their grandfather's home, then as his wife' ( pg. First, they checked to see if she had syphilis, and when they did do a biopsy on the mass they misdiagnosed her with cervical cancer when she actually had a different form of cancer known as adenocarcinoma. When Lacks had her fifth baby, she hemorrhaged and the doctors knew something was wrong. While Lacks was coincidentally pregnant, it’s still painfully common for people to self-diagnose benign conditions when the symptoms of cancer first present themselves, which often results in a devastating delay in getting proper treatment. When she initially felt something wrong-describing it as a “knot” in her womb-friends and family assumed she was pregnant. Here are five things about Henrietta Lacks and her HeLa cells that will surprise you and remind you that life is still the most compelling mystery in the universe-that no matter how much technology we have at our disposal, we still don’t truly comprehend one of the most fundamental forces of our existences.Īlthough ultimately it would not have made any difference in her treatment, Lacks’ experience dealing with her illness will strike anyone who has dealt with a cancer diagnosis as grimly familiar. The more you read about her and her genetic material, the more amazing the story really becomes-and the more distorted the story becomes as well.

Quotes from the immortal life of henrietta lacks movie#

No one could have predicted that Lacks would become legendary, or that her physical being would contribute so much to medical research that might someday save us all from cancer.ĭespite having a book and a major TV movie made about her life, there’s still a lot of people don’t understand about Henrietta Lacks’ existence. She lived with her cousin and future husband for a time as a child, got married at age 21, had five children, and shortly after her youngest son was born was diagnosed with cancer and passed away shortly thereafter.

Lacks’ mother died when she was very young, and her father moved her and many of her nine siblings to other relatives because he was unable to care for them all by himself. They continue to reproduce, replicating some of the most remarkable DNA ever cataloged-DNA made even more remarkable by the seeming ordinariness of Lacks’ life. The cells taken from her body were code-named HeLa cells, and they have been continuously involved in medical research ever since. Henrietta Lacks was just 31 when she died, but in a way, she’s still alive. It had the untimely death of a young mother of five children, the harvesting of cancer cells from her body without her family’s informed consent, and the remarkable ‛immortality’ of those cells, which continued to grow and reproduce outside of her body until the present day. A similar wave of awareness happened in 2010 when Rebecca Skloot’s book was published, telling a story that seemed to many to be the stuff of science fiction or perhaps a new Alien film by Ridley Scott. With the debut of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks on HBO in April 2017, this remarkable American story-a story involving tragedy, duplicity, racism, and cutting-edge science that has undoubtedly saved many lives-had once again been brought back to the forefront of our shared consciousness.