25+ 'The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks' Quotes All Budding Scientists Should Read

'The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks' is a 2010 book written by Rebecca Skloot.

This is a non-fiction, biography of Henrietta Lack, about how HeLa cells (Henrietta Lack) derived an immortal human cell line which became the reason for her death. The story flashes a strong message concerning ethics, race, and medicine that is interesting to read about.

It is a true story of a black woman, faith, healing, scientific discovery, and of a daughter drowned with questions about her mother. It was challenged for including explicit material, this is because many people understood its gynaecology as inappropriate material. Eventually it was banned for this reason in 2016. The book ends when Henrietta dies and the doctors harvest a tissue sample from her body without the knowledge of her family and without even her own consent either. Though Henrietta was forgotten as a person, she lives on forever in the HeLa research cells as they help scientists even today. As per the author Rebecca Skloot, this book can be read in around six hours and twenty five minutes, supposing one reads at the speed of 300 words per minute. Rebecca's quote, "Like many doctors of his era, TeLinde often used patients from the public wards for research, usually without their knowledge. Many scientists believed that since patients were treated for free in the public wards, it was fair to use them as research subjects as a form of payment",  perfectly shows the horror found within these doctors.

Read the chapter-based quote-list below for more such truth-based quotes from the Rebecca Skloot book. If you like these quotes, make sure to check out[funny science quotes] and 'Zora Neale Hurston' quotes.

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'Henrietta Lacks' related quotes are essential for the science buds altogether. Check the quotes below as you can explore different chapters per quote.

1. "It’s not only the story of HeLa cells and Henrietta Lacks, but of Henrietta’s family—particularly Deborah—and their lifelong struggle to make peace with the existence of those cells, and the science that made them possible."

- Rebecca, 'The Woman In The Photograph', Prologue.

2. "These cells have transformed modern medicine..."

- Narrator, 'Turner Station', Part One.

3. "What really would upset Henrietta is the fact that Dr. Gey never told the family anything..."

- Bobbette, 'Night Doctors', Part Two.

4. "But I tell you one thing, I don't want to be immortal if it means living forever, cause then everybody else just dies and gets old in front of you while you stay the same, and that's just sad."

- Deborah, 'The Long Road To Clover', Part Three'.

5. "The idea that God chose Henrietta as an angel who would be reborn as immortal cells made a lot more sense to them than the explanation."

- Rebecca, 'Heavenly Bodies', Part Three.

6. "Whether you think the commercialization of medical research is good or bad depends on how into capitalism you are."

- Rebecca Narration, Baruch Blumberg, 'Afterword'.

Immortality is a chapter in life that gains a lot of importance by a person in general. Check this quote list for strong inspirations.

7. "Her cells went up in the first space missions to see what would happen to human cells in zero gravity, or that they helped with some of the most important advances in medicine: the polio vaccine, chemotherapy, cloning, gene mapping, in vitro fertilization."

- Rebecca, 'The Woman In The Photograph', Prologue.

8. "I keep with me all I know about you deep in my soul, because I am part of you, and you are me. We love you, Mama."

- Deborah, 'After London', Part Three.

9. "This is how it will be when the dead are raised to life. When the body is buried, it is mortal; when raised, it will be immortal. There is, of course, a physical body, so there has to be a spiritual body."

- Rebecca, 'Heavenly Bodies', Part Three.

10. "Some things you got to release. The more you hold them in, the worse you get. When you release them, they got to go somewhere else"

- Gary, 'Soul Cleansing', Part Three.

11. "Sometimes I wonder, if somebody taught her sign language, maybe she’d still be alive."

- Deborah, 'The Hospital For The Insane', Part Three.

12. "But maybe I’ll come back as some HeLa cells like my mother, that way we can do good together out there in the world."

- Deborah, 'The Long Road To Clover', Part Three.

Research subjects as a form of payment are always interesting for technology lovers. These science-related quotes from Rebecca Skloot's work about technology and research are truly inspirational.

13. "Scientists had been trying to keep human cells alive in culture for decades, but they all eventually died. Henrietta’s were different: they reproduced an entire generation every twenty-four hours, and they never stopped. They became the first immortal human cells ever grown in a laboratory."

- Rebecca, 'The Woman in the Photograph', Prologue.

14. "Henrietta’s cells have now been living outside her body far longer than they ever lived inside it."

- Donald Defler, 'The Woman In The Photograph', Prologue.

15. "Like many doctors of his era, TeLinde often used patients from the public wards for research, usually without their knowledge. Many scientists believed that since patients were treated for free in the public wards, it was fair to use them as research subjects as a form of payment."

- Rebecca, 'Diagnosis And Treatment', Part One.

16. "Black scientists and technicians, many of them women, used cells from a black woman to help save the lives of millions of Americans, most of them white."

- Rebecca, 'Hela Factory', Part Two.

17. "Today when people talk about the history of Hopkins’s relationship with the black community, the story many of them hold up as the worst offense is that of Henrietta Lacks—a black woman whose body, they say, was exploited by white scientists."

- Rebecca, 'Night Doctors', Part Two.

18. "It’s not fair! She’s the most important person in the world and her family living in poverty."

- Lawrence, 'Night Doctors', Part Two.

19. "Many doctors tested drugs on slaves and operated on them to develop new surgical techniques, often without using anesthesia."

- Rebecca, 'Night Doctors', Part Two.

20. "She's the most important person in the world and her family living in poverty. If our mother is so important to science, why can't we get health insurance?"

- Lawrence, 'Night Doctors', Part Two.

21. "Only cells that had been transformed by a virus or a genetic mutation had the potential to become immortal."

- Rebecca, 'The Secret Of Immortality', Part Three.

Henrietta and her story are beautifully portrayed by Rebecca Skloot. Here below is a quote-list related to the memorable quotations from the Rebecca Skloot book.

22. "Your mother was on the moon, she has been in nuclear bombs and made that polio vaccine. I really don’t know how she did all that, but I guess I’m glad she did, cause that mean she helpin lots of people. I think she would like that."

- Deborah, 'Deborah's Voice', Part Two.

23. "Genetically speaking, humans are terrible research subjects."

- Rebecca, 'Strangely Hybrid', Part Two.

24. "Deborah and Zakariyya stared at the screen like they’d gone into a trance, mouths open, cheeks sagging. It was the closest they'd come to see their mother alive since they were babies."

- Rebecca, 'All That's My Mother', Part Three.

25. "Like I’m always telling my brothers, if you gonna go into history, you can’t do it with a hate attitude. You got to remember, times were different."

- Deborah, 'The Hospital For The Insane', Part Three.

26. "HeLa?...You’re saying HeLa is her spiritual body?"

- Rebecca, 'Heavenly Bodies', Part Three.

27. "If you believe the Bible is the literal truth, the immortality of Henrietta’s cells makes perfect sense..."

- Rebecca, 'Heavenly Bodies', Part Three.

Here at Kidadl, we have carefully created lots of interesting family-friendly quotes for everyone to enjoy! If you liked our suggestions for the book, 'The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks' quotes then why not take a look at ['The House On Mango Street' quotes] or [Maya Angelou love quotes]?

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