Bioethics courses at the undergraduate and graduate level increasingly anchor their opening weeks around The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks because it gives students a concrete, human case before they encounter abstract ethical frameworks. Rather than starting with utilitarianism or deontology in the abstract, instructors can introduce those frameworks as tools for analyzing something students already care about from the reading. The risk is that the book is rich enough to support an entire semester on its own, which means instructors need a clear plan for which threads to pursue and which to leave for students to explore independently. A well structured syllabus treats the book as a spine rather than the whole skeleton of the course.

A common structure devotes the first two or three weeks to the book itself, moving chronologically alongside the narrative: Henrietta's diagnosis and treatment, the isolation of the cell line, the family's decades of not knowing, and the eventual settlement over data access. Each week pairs a section of the book with a theoretical reading, so students encounter the concept of informed consent right after reading about the 1951 biopsy, and the concept of genetic privacy right after reading about the family's medical records being published without permission. That pairing keeps theory grounded in narrative rather than floating above it, which noticeably improves the quality of student writing later in the term.

After the initial weeks on the book, most syllabi pivot to comparative cases, such as the Tuskegee syphilis study, the Havasupai diabetes research controversy, or more recent genetic data debates involving companies like 23andMe. Henrietta Lacks becomes the reference point students keep returning to when they analyze these later cases, which builds a kind of shared vocabulary across the semester. Instructors report that students who have internalized the Lacks case ask sharper questions about newer controversies, because they already have a mental model for how consent failures compound over decades rather than existing as a single bad decision.

Sequencing the Major Writing Assignments

A three assignment sequence tends to work well: a short reading response due partway through the book, a longer analytical essay comparing the Lacks case to one other bioethics controversy, and a final paper where students apply an ethical framework of their choosing to a contemporary genetic privacy issue. The short response can be graded quickly and mostly for engagement, catching students who are behind on the reading before the stakes get higher. The comparative essay is where the real grading investment should go, since it is the assignment that best reveals whether students can move beyond summarizing the book toward genuine ethical analysis.

• Pair each week of the book with one theoretical reading on a matching concept
• Reserve the comparative essay for the assignment that carries the most grading weight
• Give students a menu of comparison cases rather than assigning the same one to everyone
• Require at least one primary source beyond the book in the final paper
• Build in a peer review step before the final paper is submitted for grading

Grading the Comparative Essay Fairly

Because students choose their own comparison case for the second essay, grading has to account for real variation in topic difficulty and available scholarship, which a rigid rubric can miss if it is not written carefully. The fairest approach scores the quality of the comparison itself, meaning how precisely the student identifies where the two cases align and diverge, rather than scoring which case they picked or how dramatic it is. An essay comparing Henrietta Lacks to a lesser known case but doing so with precision should outscore a flashier comparison that stays at the surface level. Making that standard explicit before students choose their topics prevents a predictable rush toward the most sensational comparison available.

Instructors teaching multiple sections or working with teaching assistants should run a calibration pass on this essay specifically, since the open topic choice creates more room for grader disagreement than a single shared prompt would. Reading three or four essays together as a group, ideally covering a range of comparison cases, helps establish what a strong comparative argument looks like regardless of which case a student picked. That shared standard then transfers across the rest of the grading pool even when individual readers are working through different topic choices.

Handling Sensitive Classroom Discussion

Because the book deals directly with racial injustice in medicine, instructors should expect and plan for classroom discussions that touch on students' own experiences or family histories with the healthcare system, particularly in diverse classrooms. Setting expectations early about how personal disclosure will be handled, and giving students the option to engage with the material analytically rather than autobiographically in their graded work, respects that some students may not want their personal history evaluated academically. This does not mean avoiding the racial dimensions of the case, which are central to the book's argument, but it does mean being deliberate about where personal reflection fits relative to graded analytical writing.

Some instructors address this by offering an optional reflective journal alongside the graded essays, ungraded or graded only for completion, where students can process personal reactions separately from the analytical work being evaluated. This keeps the grading criteria focused on argument quality and evidence use while still making room for the emotional weight the material carries for many students. Over multiple semesters, instructors who build in this separation report fewer complaints about grading feeling intrusive or presumptuous about students' personal experiences.