The treatment of African Americans in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks demonstrates the lack of ethics in the United States healthcare system during the 1950s and 1960s. Under the impression that doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital were exclusively injecting radium to treat cervical cancer, Henrietta Lacks lay down on the operating bed. During this procedure Dr. Lawrence Wharton Jr. shaved two pieces of tissue from her vagina, one from healthy cervical tissue and one from the cancerous tumor, without Henrietta's knowledge. After recovering from the surgery, Henrietta walked out the door marked “Blacks Only,” the door that signified the separation between white and African-American patients. If Henrietta had been white, would the same results have occurred? How badly did a country that proclaimed to be “One Nation Under God” divide this same land into two separate nations? The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks truly shows the racial disparity in the healthcare system. Henrietta Lacks, nee Loretta Pleasant, was born on August 1, 1920 to poor African American parents. Although she was originally from Roanoke, Virginia, Henrietta spent most of her childhood in Clover, Virginia, in a tobacco field with her grandfather and a number of cousins. As a result of excessive "quality" time spent with her cousins, Henrietta became fond of one in particular, David "Day" Lacks. He later fathered his first child. At the age of fourteen Henrietta conceived her first child, Lawrence Lacks. Unlike white mothers who gave birth to their children in hospitals; Henrietta gave birth to her son in her grandfather's house, a four-room cabin previously used as slave quarters. While white patients were certain to receive the highest patient ca...... middle of paper .......S. The public health service advanced medical technology, but it came at a high cost. A high cost that resulted in the death of many African Americans and a violation of trust in medical professionals. In the notable experiments of Henrietta Lacks, The Tuskegee Syphilis Men, and The Pellagra Incident, the medical professions did not protect the lives of these individuals in any way. In fact, they have used medical advances discovered as a result of human experimentation as a shield to mask unethical decisions. Medical professionals targeted the African American population and used their ignorance as a means to advance medical technologies. This in no way supports the ethics that medical professionals should display. The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks vividly shows the way the US Public Health Service used, abused, and ultimately destroyed the African-American community.