Chapter 9

Chapter 9: Maddi

Sitting in the hotel in the town, rebecca recalls and attempts to find more information about the lacks Family there.

After Rebecca’s first conversation with day, she drove over to Baltimore t meet Sonny LAcks. As she checked in into the Holiday Inn she went upstairs with numerous missed calls and pages  to Sonny. As she sat on the bed in the hotel room she then began to flip through the old telephone book that was on the bed side table. SHe went to call every lacks in the phone book to find a connection to Henrietta but then decided against it due to phone bills and time. Rebecca then opened an article in rolling stone by a reporter named Michael Rogers, one of the first reporters who did an article on the Lacks’s. Rodgers then went on the describe the exact room that Rebecca was staying at and the same actions he took that she was about to do. To rebecca this seemed like an episodes of the Twilight Zone. Rebecca then drove down to Turners station a town clearly hidden by the map as you had to drive through a sign to get there. Turners station was  town that had bombed in the steel making business from World War Two. At the end of the War The town destroyed tons of homes leaving many homeless, many african American. As rebecca went into the library one of the town’s women showed a documentary about Henrietta Lacks’s cells.

Chapter 8

Chapter 8: Maddi

IN the 1950’s John Hopkins continued it practices in being cheap with its patients  and practicing benevolent deception. In june in her weekly appointments Henrietta continued to tell her doctors about the pain and agony the cancer brought. She said how it felt like the disease was spreading, but the doctors only noted that she complains about a vague discomfort in her lower abdominal area, besides that, all reports said she was fine and there was no evidence of recurrence. This was one of the key practices in benevolent deception., When a doctor would not reveal information to a patient, or not even reveal the diagnosis. The idea was not to confuse or upsets a doctor’s patients with confusing r upsetting terms such as cancer, but often the premise was taken way too far. Weeks after clearing her healthy though, Henretta came back to john hopkins and appeared much worse she was clearly sick and her cancer did grow.  Henrietta was dying, As Sadie would say,” henrietta did not fade away …The only thing you could tell was in her eyes. Her eyes were telling you that she wasn’t going to be alive anymore. “ (pg 64) up until Henretta became that sick and unhealthy the secret of her cancer spread throughout the town, though her family didn’t realize she was dying as they thought the doctors were still fighting to save not to make do. Pain medication didn’t help Henrietta much either, this was also an extreme example of racism, many white people often gto better sdn stronger pain medication.

Henrietta in pain

Person: Henrietta

Subject: Henrietta’s pain, Science

Hats: Journalist

Chapter 6

Chapter 6:

For Rebecca Skloot the first days in trying to to pursue her book and the details about the Lacks family seemed troubled and challenging.Rebecca’s first achievement of finding more information about the family came from a conversations with a professor of gynecology, Ronald Pattillo. During this conversation Rebecca received lots of interrogations and and questions from mr Patillo. This is when rebecca reveals to the audience about the the tuskegee syphilis study at the tuskegee institute. In this study hundreds of  african american men were injected with syphilis to study what caused the disease to kill. The researchers watched these men die slow and painful deaths even after realizing it would be prevented with penicillin.The information about this occurrence became widespread in the 1970’s. After three days of asking questions and telling more information to doctor Patillo Rebecca finally received the phone number for Henrietta’s youngest daughter, Deborah “Dale” Lacks.Once rebecca received Deborah’s phone number,  she called immediately. Deborah seemed to tell rebecca everything about her mother and her family, jumping around years and actions. Deborah also approved Rebecca’s book about her family. Deborah also told REbecca that she wanted to learn more about her mother. The call was ended when deborah was alerted to something that appeared surprising and unwanted, mail. As Rebecca was told, she called deborah three days later and found her unwilling to say any more information about the rmother and a completely different view than the call before.  Deborah was cold and strict to the point, instead she directed Rebecca to call her brothers and their family instead. LIke deborah though, Deborah’s older brothers were not help as well.

Chapter 37 Recap

Chapter 37: The Long Road to Clover

This chapter talks about Deborah’s struggles after she returns from the research trip with Rebecca, and what happens to some members of the Lacks Family. It also discusses subjects like faith and family through the lens of a historian and journalist.

Rebecca Skloot & Deborah Lacks

Deborah returns early from a research trip with Rebecca, while she continues on. Deborah finds out that she has very high levels of blood pressure and blood sugar, which could have led to a stroke or heart attack at any moment. Symptoms shown throughout the trip was confusion, panic, redness, and swelling. Her doctor tells her to avoid stress, so she stops coming on trips with Skloot, and begins preparing for her scheduled talk at the National Foundation for Cancer Research conference. One day, Deborah tells Rebecca that she signed up for adult education classes, and was going to take placement tests to be able to go to college. But then, everything got out of hand. Deborah’s son Alfred, who was in jail at the time, was going to be on trial soon. Then Lawrence’s son was also arrested for robbery. Then, a day later, it was September 11, 2001. Skloot was driving up to Washington D.C. for the conference when she heard news of a plane hitting the World Trade Center. The conference was canceled, and there was no mention of a reschedule. Five days later, Deborah went to a church service, and had a stroke there. Her grandson Davon saved her life by keeping her conscious during the entire car ride to the hospital, and it seemed to ease the tensions in her family. But without enough money, Deborah couldn’t go to school, so she dropped the idea. Two months after her stroke, Deborah and Rebecca went to Pullum’s church to watch him baptize Sonny’s granddaughter, JaBrea. During the assembly, he called Skloot up to the stage, and she preached a great speech that got everyone cheering and saying amens. Pullum then says that every descendant of Henrietta, and everyone in the world, with the help of Rebecca’s book, will know of her great contribution.

Brain during a stroke

Attacks on September 11, 2001

Baptism of baby

– Audrey Nguyen

 

Chapter 35 Recap

Chapter 35: Soul Cleansing

Summary – As Deborah is still acting strangely and crazy, Rebecca and she get to Clover where they visit the home-house as well as the cemetery. Afterward, they visited Gladys (Henrietta’s sister) as well. While they are there, Gary (Henrietta’s cousin) comes in, and Deborah continues showing him the picture of Elsie that they got at the hospital. Deborah continues blabbering, panicking, and mumbling, while Gary tries to cool her down. The more Deborah starts talking about her mom and sister, the more worried and anxious she gets. Gary then takes her into his arms and begins preaching and praying over her. Soon her emotions are relieved and she allows herself to calm down. At the occurrence of all this, Rebecca is just sitting there looking at all the chaos that just happened. Her psychologist side kicks in as she describes the behavior and feelings of Deborah’s unusual and strange behavior. Deborah then asks God to take the burden that the cells have given her away, and adding on, Gary tells God that he knows that Rebecca has come to take that burden away. Rebecca, confused and concerned, was a little scared at Gary’s commentary but was happy that Deborah was fine. After a long day including Deborah’s cleansing, the two head home.

People – Lacks Family, Deborah

Elsie Lacks – Deborah’s Sister (Cause of her Panic and Stress)

Subjects – Faith

Gary Lacks – Henrietta’s Cousin (Very Close and Meaningful to Deborah)

Hats/Lens – Psychologist, Journalist

Deborah Found Peace and Calmness Through Her Faith in God

– Joanne Tran

Chapter 20 Recap

Chapter 20: The HeLa Bomb

Summary – At the Conference on Cell Tissue and Organ Culture, a problem was brought up by a geneticist by the name of Stanley Gartler. He told the audience that all cell cultures were contaminated by HeLa. Gartler found this out when he was running experiments with some common cell cultures and saw that they all had a genetic marker only exclusive to black Americans. Not to mention, six of the contaminated cell lines came from ATCC itself. He also found out that HeLa could float through the air on dust particles. This means that all the sterilizing researchers were doing was basically useless as HeLa was contaminating everything. Without HeLa, other cell lines wouldn’t grow meaning scientists have been wasting their time researching specialized cell tissues, which were actually HeLa cells. This infuriated scientists and some even tried to attack and oppose his ideas. Those scientists, however, found that the same genetic marker Gartler had found was in their culture as well. After this incident, scientists, including Robert Stevenson, began developing genetic tests to detect whether HeLa cells were present in cultures or not.

People – Stanley Gartler

Stanley Gartler

Subjects – HeLa, Knowledge, Science/Med

Scientists Felt Like Gartler Dropped a Bomb in the Room with His Discovery

Hat/Lens – Scientist

Scientists Found Out They Wasted Time and Money

– Joanne Tran

Chapter 14 Recap

Chapter 14: Helen Lane

Summary – When Henrietta was first introduced into the media, her name was mistakenly entered. Rather than Henrietta Lacks, her name was stated as Henrietta Lakes. No one who knew her real name, however, said anything about the mistake, mostly because they didn’t want her real name to be put out into the world. Other forms of media, including Minneapolis Star and Collier’s, wanted Gey to share Henrietta’s full story and how all the new discoveries came to be. They wanted to know about her background, her full story, and more. Gey agreed to talk about the cells and only the cells, but not Henrietta personally. While Gey refused to give any information about Henrietta, an article in Collier’s mentioned the name Helen L. as the owner of HeLa cells. It also included information about how the cells from Henrietta were taken after her death rather than when she was still alive. When Gey along with a few others edited the article, however, they didn’t fix or edit the two major mistakes found. This might have been done to lead reporters in a different direction and therefore avoiding the real Henrietta Lacks. Henrietta Lacks was now known as Helen Lane or Helen Larson to the public.

Misunderstanding of Henrietta’s Real Name

People – Henrietta, George Gey

Subjects – HeLa, Knowledge

Hat/Lens – Historian

A Song about Henrietta’s Life (uses Helen Lane for the whole song until the end)

– Joanne Tran

Chapter 12 Recap

Chapter 12: The Storm

Summary – After Henrietta’s death, George Gey wanted cell samples from her organs to do more research and testing, but first he had to get permission (due to the fact she was no longer alive). Gey asked Day but was refused permission for an autopsy of his wife. After Day was told it was going to “help his children,” however, he agreed to the autopsy without knowing what he was actually getting into. Mary Kubicek, Gey’s assistant, collected samples from Henrietta’s corpse but was disgusted the entire time. In addition, she almost fainted when seeing Henrietta’s chipped red nail polish, realizing that Henrietta was a human and not just a research subject. Henrietta’s body was sent back to Clover on a train to be buried after the autopsy. Family and friends gathered around to say their goodbyes to Henrietta. When Henrietta was being buried, a storm suddenly popped up out of nowhere around the area. It was so chaotic that a Lacks cousin died from his house crushing him. Those at Henrietta’s funeral took this event and sudden outburst as a sign from her.

Henrietta’s New Grave Marker (she didn’t have one before)

People – Henrietta, George Gey, Mary Kubicek

Autopsy (examination of a corpse)

Subjects – HeLa, Privacy/Rights

Chipped Red Nail Polish (reminded Kubicek that Henrietta was human)

Hat/Lens – Journalist

Storm (“Henrietta’s presence & sign to her family”)

– Joanne Tran

Chapter 32 Recap

In this chapter, the Lacks family travels with Skloot to gain knowledge about HeLa cells.

At the beginning of the chapter, Deborah and Zakariyya visit Christoph Langauer with Skloot acting as a journalist to learn more about their mother’s cells. Christoph Langauer is the cancer researcher from Hopkins who gave Deborah the mosaic of the HeLa cells.

He showed them where the HeLa cells were stored. Zakariyya and Deborah were amazed by the cells when they saw them under the microscope. Christoph taught them how HeLa cells helped science and clarified that the HeLa cells in the tubes were not cancerous, which relieved Deborah’s stress of her mother being constantly hurt. 

Near the end of the visit, Christoph revealed that he believed the Lacks family should be getting financial compensation and recognition for their mother’s cells.

-Katie

Chapter 30 Recap

Chapter 30: Zakariyya

Chapter 30 is written from the point of view of a journalist and focuses on Zakariyya and discusses topics like family.

Deborah took Skloot and her grandsons to the living-assisted facility where Zakariyya lived. When they got to the facility, Zakariyya just ignored everyone’s presence. When he saw Skloot, he ranted to Skloot about the doctors stealing his mother’s cells and their lies. He brought Skloot to his apartment, which was small and contained little furnishings except for a few family pictures. He said that he earned degrees, but couldn’t get a job because of his criminal record. He blamed the doctors for stealing her cells for his anger. Deborah believes that his anger was caused by Ethel’s abuse because he loathed Ethel. Zakariyya thinks it would’ve been better for Henrietta to have lived than have her cells contributed to science. Deborah brought Skloot and Zakarriya to her car so she could give Zakariyya the mosaic of the HeLa cells. She asked Zakariyya if he wanted to meet Christoph Langauer, the doctor who gave her the picture. He agreed to meet the doctor.

Zakariyya

-Katie