The Immortal LIfe of Henrietta Lacks, movie summary. Creative Writing

Movie Summary: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
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Movie Summary: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
For the first time in human history, scientists were able to sample and culture immortalized human cell lines in 1951. Known as the HeLa, the cervical cancer cell lines have led to significant scientific breakthroughs through experiments that could not be carried out on a living human. "HeLa" refers to cancerous cells extracted from Henrietta Lacks, a 31-year old African American woman who died of cervical cancer, leaving behind her husband and 5 children (Disis, 2017). To date, HeLa cells are still alive and endlessly dividing in many laboratories globally. This is a disturbing and confusing legacy touching the lives of her children, who by the time of their mother’s death, were too young and without knowledge that the cells had been harvested by researchers and stored in a laboratory at Johns Hopkins University. Her cells continued to divide in laboratory conditions at an exciting rate and this miraculous discovery led to the development of treatments for many diseases such as polio and human papillomavirus (HPV) and techniques in genetic science such as gene cloning (Genzlinger, 2017). In the film, “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” George Wolfe, the director, introduces viewers into a medical discovery that later becomes an emotional and gripping narrative about the throbbing experiences of family members, shaky scientific ethics, and racism.
The central theme that emerges from the story of “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” is that of dehumanizing the donor of the cells, Henrietta. The cells take center stage from the time they are discovered to have an incredible ability of immortality and the donor is only treated as a source more than a human. Following the death of Henrietta i...