The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks Book Test

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks Book Test

Part I: Short Answer Choose FIVE of the following questions and answer them as best you can in five to six sentences using evidence and examples from the book. 1. Discuss Henrietta’s family history as told by Rebecca Skloot. What was Henrietta’s life and background? 2. Choose one of Henrietta’s children and describe their life before and after their mother’s death. 3. What effect, if any, did Henrietta’s medical and educational background have on her actions and decisions at Johns Hopkins? Explain. 4. Why didn’t the Lacks family know that Henrietta’s cells were alive until years later? Explain using examples from the book. 5. What does the term “Jim Crow” mean and how did it apply to Henrietta Lacks’ story? 6. Why did Dr. Gey give HeLa samples to his colleagues? Did he make any money off of the cells? Why or why not? Discuss how people were able to create lucrative businesses out of HeLa cells. 7. Who was Southam and what did he do? How does this book relate to the Nuremberg codes? Discuss examples of unethical biomedical research provided in this book. 8. Discuss the treatment of the mentally ill and developmentally disabled in 1950s and 60s America. How does this affect the Lacks family? Part II: Essay Choose ONE of the following questions. Responses must include a brief introduction, conclusion, and body paragraphs and use evidence and examples from the book to support your answers. 1. How have HeLa cells impacted modern medicine? What was so special about Henrietta Lacks’ cells? How are they still relevant today? How far has cell development come since HeLa cells were first introduced? Name several breakthroughs Henrietta’s cells brought to the medical/science field. What was the “contamination problem?” And why was it important to understand for scientific progress? 2. Discuss some of the challenges Skloot faced in researching and writing Henrietta’s story. As the book progressed, how did the relationship between Deborah and the author change? Was the initial tension merely a racial tension? Or were there other issues? Why does Skloot spend such a large part of the book discussing Henrietta’s family after her death when her focus is on telling the story of the HeLa cells? How and why was Skloot able to help Deborah come to terms with her mother’s death? Did the author have the same effect on the other Lacks children?