When visiting a physician, whether it be for a check-up, specialty visit, or emergency, we typically have full confidence in our doctor's level of training. We trust that they not only have the academic capacity to care for us, but we also assume that they have our best interests at heart as their patients. What I have come to realize after reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot is that this line of thinking is a symptom of privilege in America. The non-fiction story follows the life of an African American woman in the 1940s as doctors harvested her cancer cells for research while she was receiving treatment for cervical cancer, which was later found to have been misdiagnosed.

Those cells ended up changing the direction of science, research, and medicine for decades and her immortal cell line was instrumental in the development of vaccines, the eradication of polio, the mapping of the human genome, and even the study of how human cells would behave in space. Many of the drugs, medicines, and treatments we have at our fingertips in the twenty-first century can be attributed to Mrs. Henrietta Lacks's cells, endearingly termed "HeLa".

The dark secret, however, lies in the fact that while her cells were being sold to researchers and produced at a mass scale, her impoverished family was left in utter darkness with regards to how their mother died and how she was treated at the infamous Johns Hopkins hospital, a source of fear for many African American citizens in the community. Rumors that doctors and scientists would kidnap African American people and perform torturous experiments on them without their consent were common.

Those fears were not unfounded, as the syphilis study in Tuskegee were underway as Henrietta's youngest children were growing up. Although her cells were ultimately used for scientific advancement and the betterment of our society, it is difficult to imagine the horror Henrietta's daughter, Deborah, must have faced when she discovered the mother who supposedly died when she was too young to remember was still "alive". She wasn't alive, but her cells were, and Deborah, with a limited education due to a troubled childhood, was initially under the impression that her poor mother was feeling everything that was being done to her cultured cells. This "Black Mirror-esque" altered reality in Deborah's mind, coupled with the media storm that flooded her phone with calls about her mother's impact and legacy, drove the woman to live with severe anxiety and stress.

The world of research was inevitably changed by Henrietta Lacks. Informed consent and discussions about ethical practice have inundated the scientific research process in a very necessary way. The story's message to researchers, doctors, and health professionals is clear. There is another message, however, that we can apply to our everyday lives. If we trust our doctors, if we are excited about new research and technology, if we are not afraid to place our loved ones in the care of health professionals, then we are incredibly privileged. We are in a position where we need to identify the sources of distrust and fear within people who have been wronged by the healthcare system and work towards destroying any underlying injustice that might still exist. By acknowledging the disparities that are still prevalent in healthcare and how they may contribute to misconceptions, we can begin to bridge the gap between the served and the under-served not only when with regards to equal medical treatment, but more so with ethical personal treatment.