The Significance of Henrietta Lacks and HeLa Cells by Taylor Burnett
In the beginning of starting this history day project, I had a very wide range of ideas because I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do. I did a lot of research on the Internet and at our school library, but the ideas that I thought I could make into a topic didn’t work out. It was from an excerpt of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot that I was assigned to read for my English class that I first learned about Henrietta. From this free excerpt that author Rebecca Skloot offers on her website, I was hooked on learning more about Henrietta. So I took this new but promising idea and read anything I could find about her on the Internet. My starting point was at the website for The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, but then I started to look at more websites with more articles and I found that Henrietta Lacks really did change history with her cells, and hardly anyone knew about it! From that, I decided I needed to do my project based on Henrietta Lacks.
The way I started my research was going into Google online and simply typing “Henrietta Lacks” in the search bar. From Rebecca’s website I was able to learn so much about what the story was about, how HeLa cells have changed history in medicine and many human beings, and about the Lacks family. After getting my feet on the ground and finding the starting point, I took off to further my research into the science aspect of it all. I looked into cells, cell mutation, cancerous cells, immortal cells, cell cultural, and anything else that I found interesting. I was also reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks to help me understand the person behind the cells more and her family. I did end up conducting most of my research online but it wasn’t because I couldn’t find books to use, it was just more convenient.
When it was time to put all that I had collected together and form the presentation aspect of my project, I weighed both the pros and cons of doing a board vs. a website. In the end I decided on doing a website because I felt that by using the Internet I would get to widen my audience and tell more people about Henrietta Lacks. With the help of my teacher and a few other people, they introduced the website Weebly to my classmates and I in order to make our websites.
My topic definitely relates to the theme of turning points in history because even though she is unknown by many in the world, it is predicted that HeLa cells have impacted more than the majority of the human race. Her cells have lead to so many medical miracles and discoveries that without HeLa cells, the world would not be as medically advanced as we are today and continue to be.
The way I started my research was going into Google online and simply typing “Henrietta Lacks” in the search bar. From Rebecca’s website I was able to learn so much about what the story was about, how HeLa cells have changed history in medicine and many human beings, and about the Lacks family. After getting my feet on the ground and finding the starting point, I took off to further my research into the science aspect of it all. I looked into cells, cell mutation, cancerous cells, immortal cells, cell cultural, and anything else that I found interesting. I was also reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks to help me understand the person behind the cells more and her family. I did end up conducting most of my research online but it wasn’t because I couldn’t find books to use, it was just more convenient.
When it was time to put all that I had collected together and form the presentation aspect of my project, I weighed both the pros and cons of doing a board vs. a website. In the end I decided on doing a website because I felt that by using the Internet I would get to widen my audience and tell more people about Henrietta Lacks. With the help of my teacher and a few other people, they introduced the website Weebly to my classmates and I in order to make our websites.
My topic definitely relates to the theme of turning points in history because even though she is unknown by many in the world, it is predicted that HeLa cells have impacted more than the majority of the human race. Her cells have lead to so many medical miracles and discoveries that without HeLa cells, the world would not be as medically advanced as we are today and continue to be.