Elise Bierer

Most never see him,

I do not know how to hear him,

I should not question his authority,

his sacrifices should be sufficient.

My heart full of his love,

Am I like a room filled with nothing,empty

but fulfilled.He is light in the dark

And others claim he is fake, disbelievers

surround me, they try to poke my faith,

negativity of him, I do not listen,

I see all that he has made,

If only they could see the beauty,

The light in the darkness,

rainbow after the storm

I jolt out of my dream,

My emptiness back again,

This time I read and pray,

While he is with me,

Guiding me to greatness,

Again, while reading we notice a lot of segregation throughout the book that causes many difficulties in Henriettas life. All of this reminded me of a previous book that we’ve read, Between the World and me. Reading about the many areas of segregation in the book reminded me of the segregation in Between the World and Me because both of the main character had to experience these difficultes first hand. For example, as we know Henrietta didn’t get the same treatment in the hospital that a white person would get. And I’m Between the World and Me, Coates had to deal with the fact that colored people weren’t given the same opportunities and he can’t Perdue his dreams as easy unlike a white person.

https://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/books/between-the-world-and-me-to-be-black-in-todays-america/

One main thing that I really enjoyed about the book was how Skloot wrote about many different point of views of people that knew Henrietta or that were related to her. I also noticed the many different ways that she used these points of views to represent who Henrietta really was and what these people knew about HeLa cells. In fact in many chapters when skloot was talking to the people that knew Henrietta, they described her of what how she used to be. Some of her closest friends and family explained that she was very out going and loved to go dancing. They also talked about how kind and fun of a person she was to everyone regardless of if she liked them or not. I also really liked how the book told the story from not only the point of Henrietta but it also focuses on how the other people felt through this experience and tough time.

After Henriettas death and her immortal cells we’re used around the world, one question kept arising while continuing to read.Why didn’t her family get any of the money that these people made off of her cells. To me this is just morally wrong. First the doctors didn’t tell Henrietta about the risks of the procedure and how she would be infertile after the radiation and surgery.she also wasn’t informed that her cells were being taken for testing.Her family was also not informed of any of this, and they were also not informed of how her cells were being tested and used. There was also many other patcients that were not informed of the risks to their procedures.

This source that I found discusses the code that doctors must follow when explaining the procedure ams risks to their patcients however back then many doctors didn’t follow this procedure, including Henriettas Doctor. In fact I believe that they also didn’t inform Henrietta that her cells were being taken because they were only thinking about themselves and the money they were going to make.

https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/informed-consent-what-must-physician-disclose-patient/2012-07

While reading this book I noticed a reoccurring theme of science because as we know, the book was based off of Henrietta's story of what she went through and her immortal cells. Throughout the book Skloot writes about everything that relates to her cells, from talking with Henriettas family and the many different ways that researchers used her cells to cure other diseases and test theories.

This source that I found discusses many of the different experiments and ways that people used HeLa cells to help with their research since her cells were immortal.

https://osp.od.nih.gov/scientific-sharing/hela-cells-timeline/

For the duration of the whole book I found the reoccurring theme of family to be very interesting and meaningful. In the book I noticed that Henriettas family was very close-knit and would do just about everything for each other. For example in chapter 11 when Henriettas cousin Emmett Lacks found out she was sick, him and a few other family members went down to Hopkins and donated blood for Henrietta. Also in the beginning of the book when Henrietta couldn’t get picked up by Day from Hopkins since he worked, Henriettas other family members offered to have her over until Day could pick her up. Lastly, I realized that the reason Henrietta didn’t tell her family about her sickness for a while was to protect them from worrying about her.To me this showed just how close this family was to each other and it shows just how much they’re willing to do for each other in order to keep each other safe.

After realizing how much this family would do for each other it reminded me of the book we’ve previous read this year, “The Devils Highway”. In the previously read book they also had a major theme of family because the people Luis Alberto Urrea wrote about did anything for the greater good of their family. Most of them would risk their own lives just for the hope that their family would have a better life in America.

In the first few chapters of the book, I noticed that there was a larger sum of racism and segregation of colors. When Henrietta first thought something I was wrong she just brushed it away and hoped that it was nothing. After things got worse she decided to see her doctor which then told her to go to Hopkins Hospital. Henrietta was very hesitant about it at first because since she was black, she knew that she wasn’t going to receive the same treatment as white people. As Skloot states in the book “She, like most black patients, only went to Hopkins when she thought she had no choice.” This shows how Henrietta and other black people back then were scared to go to Hopkins because they knew they would be treated differently and unfairly compared to white people. As a result of Henrietta waiting so long to get medical attention from Hopkins they didn’t recognize her case sooner which would have helped if these people didn’t have to be afraid of going to the hospital.