Medical Advancement versus Cultural Beliefs
The
LIFE of Henrietta Lacks
To
be moved, conflicted and evermore curious you only need to start reading
Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of
Henrietta Lacks [Rebecca Skloot, “Life,” The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, (New York: Crown Publishers,
2010)]. The first part of her book, entitled “Life,” makes you question the
development of the modern medical field, and draws you into the story of a
woman’s life that has greatly been overlooked in the history of medicine.
Henrietta’s cancer cells would be found to never die, unlike most human cells;
Henrietta Lacks’ cells would become known as HeLa. Skloot intricately ties
together a complicated timeline that involves the medical developments leading
up to the “discovery” of the HeLa cells, what is known of Henrietta Lacks’s
life up until her death in 1951, the beginning of Skloot’s journey to discover
the story of Henrietta and her family and trying to put the reader into the
culture of the mid-20th century that included racism, sexism and elitism that
is difficult for us to comprehend.
Part
One develops as Skloot travels back and forth between her personal journey to
discover more about Henrietta Lacks and the series of developments in cell
cultures and cancer-fighting technology. She starts with Henrietta’s first exam
where she was diagnosed with cancer. Outlining the foreign nature of hospitals
to those who grew up outside of the medical culture, like Henrietta, and
especially the difficulty of receiving medical care as a poor African American
in Baltimore, Maryland. Skloot talks about Henrietta’s life from her childhood
up until her diagnosis. To balance the story, Skloot includes a couple of
chapters of medical developments and discusses the complex views of the medical
field by the public, particularly surrounding cell cultures. The last aspect of
Part One revolves around Skloot’s personal journey to get in contact with
Henrietta’s family, and her tumultuous start to uncover a family’s history of
loss, distrust and manipulation.
While
the story unweaving before the reader brings a whole mix of emotions, one of
the main aspects of Skloot’s Part One is the conflict between general population,
specifically the rural poor, and the development of the medical field. There
was a complete disconnect between the developing medical field and public
understanding and acceptance of modern medicine. Henrietta was just one of the
many that came to a hospital, but not understanding fully her diagnosis or the
treatment implications. While it was common practice for doctors to explain
that radiation treatments would most likely make her infertile, Henrietta did
not understand until it was too late that the treatment would make it so she
could not have another child (Skloot, 46-7). A gap in language and
understanding was the likely culprit of this tragic misunderstanding, but the
fact the Henrietta also did not grasp the seriousness of her condition, and that
it was likely a choice between fertility and life, and she said if she had
known she would not have gone through the radiation treatments (Skloot, 47).
With
such a disconnect in understanding and priorities it is not surprising that
many people did not want to have biopsies taken to be used for experimentation,
but without this practice medical advancement would likely not have occurred at
the rate it has. Even though Henrietta’s husband was asked if doctors could
take samples of Henrietta’s cells after her death, his lack of full
understanding of the implications did not prevent them from taking those
samples, and continue using the samples previously taken without Henrietta’s
knowledge. While we would like to say that the doctors were purely in the wrong,
without Henrietta’s “immortal cells” many of the medical advances that they
lead to would not have happened, or at least would have not had happened as
early as they did.
There
is an ethical issue that people still struggle with today regarding the line
between patient permission and medical advancement. Had Henrietta been more
educated and had an explanation about the impacts her cells could have on the
world, would she have agreed? Do doctors have the right to disregard cultural
beliefs in the name of saving lives? Skloot has only begun to dive into these
issues in Part One, but her open-minded pursuit of the truth allows for a
controversial issue to be addressed from all sides simultaneously. The level of
respect Skloot brings to the varying interpretations and lives involved in the
“discovery” of the HeLa cells allows for a productive conversation around a
part of history that is often brushed aside and forgotten, but is very much
relevant.
