The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks Summary

The third section of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks was about the journey of Deborah and the author, Rebecca Skloot finding information about her mother’s cells and sister, Elsie. Elsie was forgotten by her family because she was sent away to an insane asylum. Doctors diagnosed Elsie with idiocy, which was caused by Henrietta’s condition with syphilis. Doctors in the Crownsville Hospital conducted research on some of the patients without any consent. This was another example of doctors taking advantage of black patients, similar to Henrietta. The Lacks family had trouble trusting any white reporter or scientist because they were only interested their mother’s cells.The author had to express her intentions for the novel to Deborah that
There are health disparities in insurance coverage for the family. They were unable to afford insurance because it was too expensive. Deborah was the only child to truly care about information about her sister. This was a consequence in her health, which led her to have high blood pressure from the stress by the new information. The distal determinant of her health was the information she discovered about her sister, Elsie.The proximal determinant was the infomation about her mom and sister caused her to have hives. It was stress from her son, Alfred that was constantly committing crimes. It was interesting in how Henrietta’s cells were able to survive after her death for several years. The telomeres in her cancer cells kept connecting with her chromosomes, which never died. Henrietta was misdiagnosed with cervical cancer, the real problem was caused by HPV. The family’s reaction to the misdiagnosis surprised me. The family overcame many struggles such as figuring out Henrietta’s cells were used for research and the solution for several diseases such as