Henrietta Lacks Research Paper

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Racism in the United States began in the 1400’s and continues till this day. Henrietta Lacks was a young African American women from Virginia who dealt with racial discrimination her whole life. She feels pain on the lower area of her body and soon finds out that she officially has cervical cancer. Every hospital stated that they could not help her since she was black. Once she found a hospital that is semi-supportive to blacks, the doctors remove her cells without her consent. Eventually the doctors find out that Henrietta’s cells appear to be immortal. Neither Henrietta nor her family received any benefits from the HeLa cells. Sellers made about two hundred to ten thousand dollars a vial and the Lacks family made no money from the cells. Racial Discrimination in the Immortal…show more content…
When describing Henrietta’s hospital situation, Rebecca Skloot states, “David drove Henrietta nearly twenty miles to get to Hopkins, not because they preferred it, but because it was the only major hospital for miles that treated black patients. This was the era of Jim Crow, when black people showed up at white-only hospitals, the staff was likely to send them away, even it if meant they might die in the parking lot” (Skloot 15). That is unreasonable for doctors to treat their patients with disrespect and view the African Americans value as nothing. Leaving a patient out in the street to die without any support is unacceptable and and unthoughtful. Whether a person is white or colored, everyone is equal and the same. Financially no one is guaranteed to be equal, but according to the fourteenth amendment, all men are created equal (American History). The amendment was passed on June 8th, 1866, nevertheless, Henrietta was born on August 1st, 1920. The fourteenth amendment was passed about sixty years before Henrietta Lacks was born and the doctors still segregated her from the white-only
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