HeLa: The Living Legacy of a Misinformed Woman

Becca Hoffman and Ally Hamlyn Senior Division Group Website

Process Paper
Through our combined interest in the field of medicine, we had decided to focus on a moral story that had an influence on medicine today. Both of our mothers work in the field of medicine. While discussing potential topics, our mothers sparked our interest with the acronym HeLa. HeLa is an immortal cell line which has changed the face of medicine. With this acronym, we decided to research the woman behind these changes, Henrietta Lacks. This womans journey, both through life and death, has impacted many aspects of medicine. These impacts led us to the strange story behind the rights and responsibilities involved in her immortal journey. Initially, we both purchased The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. We took notes on this book, and discussed the possibility of the connection to the theme that her story provided. We furthered our research using bibliographic references from Ms. Skloots book. Additionally her website led us to in depth medical journals and articles published on the story of the Lacks family. As we continued researching, we found informative sources from the archives of the Tuskegee Institute and the NIH. After much consideration we found that the website category would be the best use of our resources considering that the pictures and information could be displayed in an easy to use format. Using our creativity, we put our heads together and established a functioning outline of what we wanted our website to show. Our project ideas were brought to life through collaboration and many hours of editing and formatting on the Weebly website. After creating a first draft of the website, we went back through and adjusted specific ideas in relation to the theme, and modified the design details of the site.

Henriettas cells have impacted many medical discoveries since her death that the woman behind the cells seems almost inconsequential. However, this woman has a story that is impossible to forget. Before Rebecca Skloots research of this woman, no one understood the importance of Henriettas story. Her journey relates to the theme because her rights were violated by her doctors who had the responsibility to inform her of the exact procedures and their plans to remove a portion of her cells for research. However this informed consent was not given as Henrietta was not clearly informed of the procedures and risks involved. Through the research of her cells, society has made great advancements in treatments and IVF (In Vitro Fertilization). Due to the significant discoveries her cells have allowed us to make, we have ignored the violations of her rights to make decisions about her life and property.
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