How Did Henrietta Lacks Changed In The 1950s?

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Pages: 3

Have you ever wondered how to changed something, but don’t know how or where to start? Well in the 1950s, there was a woman named Henrietta Lacks, you may have heard of her cells HeLa. These cells help figure out a cure for polio, and many other vaccines that we use today. She had many doctors and, other people do her wrong because she was a black woman at this time in her life she was also trying to battle cervical cancer. Doctors felt that since there were no laws against what they were doing to black people it was okay to continue their studies to further science. There was an author who after Henrietta died she wanted to find the truth about who this woman was, and she was determined to do so. There is a question that if the book had been published back in the 50s close to when Henrietta died things would have been different, but some also say nothing would have changed. The fact is things would be very different, things would have changed, if the book had been published in the 1950s, than if it was published if it at its original time. …show more content…
In the 1950s, the segregation was very active, such as blacks and whites went to different hospitals for treatment. Henrietta had to travel a while to get to Johns Hopkins hospital for her treatment, because it was the only one that treated blacks in that area (pg.14). So clearly, the segregation was an issue. Therefore, Rebecca Skloot may not have been able to talk to the lacks family to get the information she needed for her book. It also could have been she would not have been as interested in the family, as she was when she published many years after Henrietta’s death when segregation had diminished. Therefore, for this reason the story would have changed if the book had been published in the