In The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot uses the misunderstood information to shape people’s perception of the Lacks. When their relative Henrietta passed away due to cancer, there was a lot of miscommunication about the science behind Henrietta’s special cells, so the Lacks thought she was alive. “Bobbette excused herself and ran home, bursting through the screen door into the kitchen, yelling for Lawrence, “Part of your mother, it’s alive!” Lawrence called his father to tell him what Bobbette had heard, and Day didn’t know what to think. “Henrietta’s alive?!” he thought. It didn’t make any sense. (Skloot 181). Without knowing more about the story, it’d seem like the Lacks are still full of hope and aren’t accepting the death of Henrietta. But that doesn’t only apply to them when the whole world has misinformation about what the HeLa cells really do or really are. People were confused a lot of times because of the difficulty that the scientists have to deal with when it comes to what information to share. There are classified information or unconfirmed science that could be shared, or even just not being transparent. These leads to people having the wrong perception and understand the wrong things, just like the Lacks, they don’t seem to know a lot about Henrietta’s death, but it isn’t because they’re stupid or uneducated. However, that could be a factor contributing to the lack of knowledge. Being in their social status they don’t ask for more, they work with what they have.

Frustrated, Confused by Bjørn Normann jr. via flickr/All Rights Reserved

There are a few times when I was doing school work and midway through the assignment I realized I’ve done something wrong, which caused redoing of a lot of work or had to look over the work a lot of times for possible mistakes. To me, that seems like the easiest example when it comes to misunderstandings. When a given task isn’t understood, either the instructions are unclear or I didn’t read the instructions very carefully. But this is an easier way of seeing how the Lacks are facing this issue, they’re being sent on the wrong path of thinking while some think they are just not knowledgeable.

Another example could be when I was little it was hard to communicate with adults, like my parents. That led to misunderstandings and causes some frustration. Both parties felt the confusion and most of the time when the communication wasn’t clear and was difficult, I wouldn’t get what I want. Communication is an important aspect, that’s creatures like us navigate through life.