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Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Thank you, Henrietta Lacks!

I am in a book club via facebook thanks
to my pal, Lea.
In the past the books were fiction.
Entertaining but not my type of book.
Still I read them because I love to read and
try things outside of my normal genre.
This month though, I cannot stop reading
this mostly autobiography book called
THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS
by Rebecca Skoot
Oh my! What a book!
Back in my nursing school days I had heard in textbooks
about Hela cells and myself, just as the author,
never thought about what HeLa meant.
Here comes this book not only to answer a question
I never thought to ask but to once again
tell me just how lucky I personally am for Henrietta Lacks.
She was a poor black tobacco farmer in 1951 with three
young children under the age of 4 when she was
faced with cervical cancer.
Back in those days there was no real treatment for cancer
of her type and no way to test for cures.
Yet, against her knowing, a brave doctor took some of
Henrietta's cancer cells and brought them to his lab.
He truly believed these cells would die just as all specimens
he had tried before yet Henrietta's were different.
Her cells not only lived but thrived and multiplied.
In those days, when cells were used they would take
the first two letters of the patient's first and last name
and that is where the infamous cells began to be called
HeLa.
HeLa cells were the first to survive and this doctor
began mass multiplying her cells and spreading
them all over the United States.
Now medical scientists had a way to test chemotherapy,
polio vaccines, and many other things that
before could not be figured out.
The parts that really get me that all of this was
done without the permission of Henrietta or her family.
Unfortunately Henrietta died and no one in her family
knew of this until 20 years later.
Such an amazing story.
Although I have always known how fortunate, how lucky
I am to have beaten a cancer back in 1968,
I am even more floored by the fact that
as close as 1951 there were no known chemotherapy
and cancer treatments that were known.
The treatments were barbaric before 1951.
Had I been born just 10 years earlier I doubt
any physician would have known how to treat Wilms' Tumor,
I most assuredly would have died from the big C.
The book also gives me chills when it talks about
the things that were done to patients without consent
prior to HeLa cells.
It is because of her that there are now informed consent
laws. The most amazing and eye-opening book I have
ever read, and I have read many, many books.
The author goes into not only Henrietta's life, tells
the personal story of herself, but of her family that still lives
today, poor and never gaining any financial benefit from
the milestones their loved one gave to the medical profession.
Whether you read or not, this book should be bought and
read by everyone. I promise you will not be disappointed
and will also so thankful for this woman who
has, because of her cells, saved many people's lives
as well as the reason for so many cures to so many diseases.
If no one has ever said it before,
I must say, Thank you, Henrietta Locks and all your heirs!

2 comments:

  1. I, too, found the book to be excellent. I do believe that she knew that her cells were being taken and that she was told that they were being used for good prior to her death and her family just refused to believe that. She after all, didn't let them know about her being ill from the beginning - until she was going through the radiation and was seriously ill and could hardly function - she was a secretive person. I am not sure she totally understood totally what it all meant, but I do believe that she was told. I could hardly put this book down - I highly recommend it!

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  2. THANKS LIL ABOUT TELLING ME ABOUT THE BOOK OF HENRITTA J HAVE A HARD TINE READING SINCE MY EYES ARE LOW VISION, I AM GOING TO TAKE IT OUT OF THE LIBRARY , LOL MONE

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