The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks: Part 2

by Rebecca Skloot
This biography immortalizes a woman whose cancerous cells contributed to medical breakthroughs around the world.

Here are links to our lists for the book: Foreword–"Deborah's Voice", Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, "Where They Are Now"–Afterword
15 words 2396 learners

Learn words with Flashcards and other activities

Definition First
Print Flashcards

Other learning activities

Answer a few questions about each word. Use this to prep for your next quiz! Compete with other teams in real time to see who answers the most questions correctly! Test your spelling acumen. Read the definition, listen to the word and try spelling it!

Teaching tools

Create and assign quizzes to your students to test their vocabulary. Assign learning activities including Practice, Vocabulary Jams and Spelling Bees to your students, and monitor their progress in real-time.

Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. inoculate
    inject or treat with the germ of a disease to render immune
    Salk would inoculate 2 million children and the NFIP would test their blood to see if they’d become immune.
  2. autoclave
    a heating device used to sterilize tools and instruments
    Its walls were lined with industrial steel autoclaves for steam sterilizing; row upon row of enormous, mechanically stirred vats of culture medium; incubators; glass culturing bottles stacked on their sides; and automatic cell dispensers—tall contraptions with long, thin metal arms that squirted HeLa cells into one test tube after another.
  3. encephalitis
    inflammation of the brain usually caused by a virus
    In the early fifties, scientists were just beginning to understand viruses, so as Henrietta’s cells arrived in labs around the country, researchers began exposing them to viruses of all kinds—herpes, measles, mumps, fowl pox, equine encephalitis—to study how each one entered cells, reproduced, and spread.
  4. centrifuge
    an apparatus that separates particles from a suspension
    Others put them in special centrifuges that spun so fast the pressure inside was more than 100,000 times that of gravity, to see what happened to human cells under the extreme conditions of deep-sea diving or spaceflight.
  5. nodule
    a small rounded mass or protuberance on the body
    Five to ten days later, hard nodules began growing at the injection sites. Southam removed some of the nodules to verify that they were cancerous, but he left several to see if the patients’ immune systems would reject them or the cancer would spread.
  6. inconsequential
    lacking worth or importance
    In a statement he’d later repeat again and again during hearings about his research, Southam wrote, “It is, of course, inconsequential whether these are cancer cells or not, since they are foreign to the recipient and hence are rejected. The only drawback to the use of cancer cells is the phobia and ignorance that surrounds the word cancer.”
    "Inconsequential" also means "not following logically"—this adjective could describe Southam's argument that telling patients he is injecting them with cancerous cells is inconsequential since their bodies would reject the foreign cells anyway; if he'd known that was true, there would've been no need for the experiment.
  7. deleterious
    harmful to living things
    To use the dreaded word ‘cancer’ in connection with any clinical procedure on an ill person is potentially deleterious to that patient’s well-being, because it may suggest to him (rightly or wrongly) that his diagnosis is cancer or that his prognosis is poor.
  8. fallacious
    based on an incorrect or misleading notion or information
    The hospital called the suit “misleading and fallacious.”
  9. innocuous
    not injurious to physical or mental health
    In a letter to the editor of Science, one of them warned, “When we are prevented from attempting seemingly innocuous studies of cancer behavior in humans...we may mark 1966 as the year in which all medical progress ceased.”
  10. cavalier
    showing a lack of concern or seriousness
    Despite the importance of this research, many scientists seemed cavalier about their cultures. Few kept clear records of which cells grew from which donors, and many mislabeled their cultures, if they labeled them at all.
  11. castigate
    censure severely
    Asking for a (speedly trial) to Let me know what lays ahead in the future, I feel as thod I sure be castigate or chastise for the wronge I’ve did, So I’m ready to get it over now with it.
    "Castigate" and "chastise" can be synonyms, but "castigate" also means "inflict severe punishment on" (which should be worse than severe criticism or disapproval). Joe Lacks's letter to the judge asking to receive his punishment might have been a factor in his sentence of only 15 years for murder. Another factor could be that the judge did not want to castigate a man whose nickname of Crazy Joe is supported by psychiatric reports.
  12. exhume
    dig up for reburial or for medical investigation
    Black corpses were routinely exhumed from graves for research, and an underground shipping industry kept schools in the North supplied with black bodies from the South for anatomy courses.
  13. predisposition
    the state of being susceptible to a disease or condition
    In 1969, a Hopkins researcher used blood samples from more than 7,000 neighborhood children—most of them from poor black families—to look for a genetic predisposition to criminal behavior.
  14. ubiquitous
    being present everywhere at once
    This was the first time Henrietta’s real name appeared in print. Along with it, for the first time, ran the now ubiquitous photograph of Henrietta standing with her hands on her hips.
  15. inestimable
    beyond calculation or measure
    That lady has achieved true immortality, both in the test-tube and in the hearts and minds of scientists the world over, since the value of HeLa cells in research, diagnosis, etc., is inestimable.
Created on Mon Jul 29 20:47:52 EDT 2013 (updated Tue Jul 01 18:50:30 EDT 2025)

Sign up now (it’s free!)

Whether you’re a teacher or a learner, Vocabulary.com can put you or your class on the path to systematic vocabulary improvement.