In The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, the doctors at John Hopkins Hospital took Henrietta Lacks’ cells for research samples without her permission. When they found out the first immortal human cell, the samples were wide-spread to numerous labs in the world and tested to create polio vaccines, anti-tumor medicines, further studies and tests that create a huge amount of income.
This situation seems familiar in numerous fictional movies such as Incredibles 2. Evelyn Deavor who’s the villain tricked the Elastic girl to help her accomplish her mission of controlling all the superheroes’ minds and get rid of them from citizens’ hearts, so she could monopolize the fame.
George Gey took her cells and mass-produced them without any of her acknowledgment and no single one report was told to the Lacks family. Same as the Elastic girl in Incredibles 2 who had no idea that she was being controlled by the evil organization and her family were also kept in dark.
The superheroes were in a meeting with the organization that is actually evil.
“New ‘Incredibles 2’ Image Gives Us Our First-Look At The Tech-Savvy Evelyn Deavor.” Pixar Post. 2018, https://www.pixarpost.com/2018/04/new-incredibles-2-image-gives-us-our.html.
The difference is that Henrietta had no chance to know the immorality before she died, but Elastic girl had the chance to overthrow the stage. It seems like the end of the story until Elastic girl noticed the victory of catching the screensaver (the villain) was too easy and unusual. She realized the mind control goggles on her eyes. In the end, she found out the truth, and she helped herself and her family to get rid of the evil organization’s control. On the contrary, Henrietta was not that lucky like a protagonist in the movie. She had no chance to gain the right that she deserves and to help her family get the benefit and respect that they should receive before she died.
Hi Heloise, this is certainly an interesting post you made, mainly about the idea about connecting lies to self-benefit. It was always a question for me, even something that I was able to work into school projects, but I wonder what was it so alluring about self benefits that you would lie to the people around you. But the truth is that life isn’t like Pixar movies with happy endings, and many others probably had the same story of Henrietta but were never brought to light. Do you think it is worth it? To help the world when they would leave your family to dust? Is it worth it to help the world when you’ll never be remembered for it? Our memories and legacies are just ashes, they fade away and nobody will remember them, so why? Why do we try? It was fun reading your post. it made me look back to many thoughts I have pondered.
Hey Heloise,
Should Henrietta survived from her deadly cancer, what would she do once she finds out that cells were taken without her permission in order for a medical breakthrough as well as the scientists achieving fame across the medical society? Maybe the events occurring to Elastic Woman in the movie Incredibles 2 will happen in real life is such event occurred. I couldn’t stop wondering about the world right now if Henrietta decided to sue the scientists of John Hopkins for collecting her cells without her consent. It’s true, however, that the discovery of HeLa has led to numerous vaccines that allowed us to fight against numerous deadly diseases and to live longer. What will this world look life without HeLa, the first immortal cell line that enabled scientists to invent numerous medicines and vaccines that would benefit our daily lives?
Nice post, Heloise. I thought it was interesting how the comparison between Henrietta and Elastic girl was not exact, and Elastic girl lived and went on to resolve the issue surrounding herself. This makes one wonder how Henrietta would have dealt with her immortal cells. In The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks, who do you think Evelyn Deavor from The Incredibles 2 represents, and why? Probably George Gey, but he didn’t trick Henrietta as much as forget to include her in the process. Another option would be the big companies that sold and distributed HeLa, as they actually profited from HeLa. If Henrietta succeeded like Elastic girl, she still probably wouldn’t have kept all her cells to herself, but she wouldn’t let others profit off of her, either.