Letter to the Lacks Family
Dear Lacks Family,
I would like to lend my dearest apologies for the hardships and experiences that you have gone through with the death of your dearly missed mother, Henrietta Lacks. Through Rebecca Skloot's novel, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, I have understood your position in the “bioethics war” and feel that your ethnicity should not have stood in the way of how you were forced to live your lives. I would like to praise you for continuing to stay strong as a family throughout the whole process, and congratulate you on the wonderful novel that you have helped produce for the world to read. I would also like to apologize on behalf of those who took advantage of your family, or simply did not take the time to explain to you what had been going on with Henrietta and her immortal cells. This was ethically wrong of Henrietta’s doctors to do without informed consent on the matter. I feel as if your family deserves more recognition than you have gotten because behind every great woman in history, I can definitely say, there is a wonderful family supporting them along the way. You were Henrietta’s support system and you gave her the strength to be the woman that you remember her as, and the woman that is portrayed throughout the marvelous novel. This meaning of family is very important and I now clearly understand what Henrietta’s life and death have meant to the you and those close to her. Although each family member was affected differently by the death of Henrietta Lacks, as Deborah mentioned to Rebecca Skloot, Henrietta continues to live on and look over her family.
I would like to thank the Lacks family as well for opening up to Rebecca Skloot and interviewers in the willingness to expand your story. Awareness on the matter will continue to grow with the help of the Lacks family, and those that hear the story of Henrietta and her life.
I am in the tenth grade, and my AP World History class has taken a definite interest in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, debating bioethical topics, expanding our knowledge of the subject, and mainly spreading awareness of your story. We will even be having a presentation of the novel and what we feel to be the most important aspects of the novel in our school on Tuesday, June 1, 2010. We hope to accomplish our goal of spreading awareness throughout our school and community so that nothing like this will happen again. We hope that by educating those around us, they can help expand your story even further.
Sincerely,
Katie Chaplin
I would like to lend my dearest apologies for the hardships and experiences that you have gone through with the death of your dearly missed mother, Henrietta Lacks. Through Rebecca Skloot's novel, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, I have understood your position in the “bioethics war” and feel that your ethnicity should not have stood in the way of how you were forced to live your lives. I would like to praise you for continuing to stay strong as a family throughout the whole process, and congratulate you on the wonderful novel that you have helped produce for the world to read. I would also like to apologize on behalf of those who took advantage of your family, or simply did not take the time to explain to you what had been going on with Henrietta and her immortal cells. This was ethically wrong of Henrietta’s doctors to do without informed consent on the matter. I feel as if your family deserves more recognition than you have gotten because behind every great woman in history, I can definitely say, there is a wonderful family supporting them along the way. You were Henrietta’s support system and you gave her the strength to be the woman that you remember her as, and the woman that is portrayed throughout the marvelous novel. This meaning of family is very important and I now clearly understand what Henrietta’s life and death have meant to the you and those close to her. Although each family member was affected differently by the death of Henrietta Lacks, as Deborah mentioned to Rebecca Skloot, Henrietta continues to live on and look over her family.
I would like to thank the Lacks family as well for opening up to Rebecca Skloot and interviewers in the willingness to expand your story. Awareness on the matter will continue to grow with the help of the Lacks family, and those that hear the story of Henrietta and her life.
I am in the tenth grade, and my AP World History class has taken a definite interest in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, debating bioethical topics, expanding our knowledge of the subject, and mainly spreading awareness of your story. We will even be having a presentation of the novel and what we feel to be the most important aspects of the novel in our school on Tuesday, June 1, 2010. We hope to accomplish our goal of spreading awareness throughout our school and community so that nothing like this will happen again. We hope that by educating those around us, they can help expand your story even further.
Sincerely,
Katie Chaplin
