She?s simply called HeLa, the code name given to the world?s firstĬells, cut from her cervix just months before she died. She?s usually identified as Helen Lane, but Science textbooks, on blogs and laboratory walls. No one knows who took that picture, but it?s appeared hundreds of times in magazines and Her?a tumor that would leave her five children motherless and change the future of medicine.īeneath the photo, a caption says her name is ?Henrietta Lacks, Helen Lane or Helen Larson.?
THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS ANSWER KEY SKIN
Her lightīrown skin is smooth, her eyes still young and playful, oblivious to the tumor growing inside It?s the late 1940s and she hasn?t yet reached the age of thirty. She looks straight into the camera and smiles, hands on hips, dress suit neatly pressed, Here?s a photo on my wall of a woman I?ve never met, its left corner torn and patched together Published by The Crown Publishing Group, a
What or who motivated you to undertake the project? How did you go about your research? What obstacles did you encounter? What discoveries did you make? Looking back on the process, what did you learn about yourself as a researcher or as a person?Ĭopyright ? by Rebecca Skloot. Why does Skloot dwell so extensively on her own story in the essay?ĭ) Write the story of a research project of your own. Why does Skloot find Lacks’s story so compelling?Ĭ) This essay is the prologue to Skloot’s book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. “The Woman in the Photograph” by by Rebecca SklootĪ) Was the surgeon who first cultivated Henrietta Lacks’s cells for research justified in doing so? Why or why not?ī) Rebecca Skloot writes, “As I worked my way through graduate school studying writing, I became fixated on the idea of someday telling Henrietta’s story” (paragraph 29). Discussion Topics - “The Woman in the Photograph” by Rebecca Skloot