Fact 1: Henrietta Lacks was born Loretta Pleasant on August 1, 1920 in Roanoke Virginia, later passed on October 4, 195 due to cancer. She was sometimes erroneously called Henrietta Lakes, Helen Lane or Hennie. She was an African-American woman who was the unwitting source of cells (from her cancerous tumor) which were cultured by George Otto Gey to create the first known human immortal cell line for medical research. This is now known as the HeLa cell line.…
On February sixth, 1951 Henrietta Lacks, a black tobacco farmer from south Virginia, went to Johns Hopkins hospital to be treated for cervical cancer, she was treated by Dr. Lawrence Wharton Jr. He prepared her for her treatment and dilated her cervix, but before beginning the treatment he, without her permission, shaved two dime sized pieces of tissue one from her tumor and one from her healthy tissue then, he placed them in glass dishes. Those glass dishes were given to Dr. George Gey and his assistant, Mary Kubick, labeled them HeLa, because she combined the first two letters of Henrietta's first and last name. Dr. Gey, like many other scientist, had been trying to grow human cells outside of the body because it would help test the effects that medicine,…
Henrietta Lacks was born on August 1, 1920, in Roanoke, Virginia. Lacks died of cervical cancer on October 4, 1951, at age 31. Cells taken from her body without her knowledge were used to form the HeLa cell line. Lacks's case has sparked legal and ethical debates over the rights of an individual to his or her genetic material and tissue.…
First, the most important aspect of long snapping is a comfortable stance. Your toes must be pointed straight ahead, parallel, weight equally distributed on the toes and heels. The feet should be no wider than a shoulders width apart. It is important to have a concrete base, which allows you to lower your body to the ground. This creates a solid foundation, from which, to operate from. Your back should be flat with your knees bent, forming a "Z" in the knees. Weight should be equally distributed between the insteps of the feet, ankles, knees and hips. Next, lay your stomach on your thighs for support. The goal is to have complete movement of arms through the lower body without losing balance or control.…
In 1931, he was also elected president of the Institute of Physics. Ernest was offered the chair at Manchester University in 1906 and he did accept the offer, so he moved to Manchester’s new laboratories. Rutherford was luckily enough to be rewarded with the Nobel Prize in 1908, in Chemistry for his work on the transmutation of elements and the chemistry of radioactive material. In the year 1919, Ernest became the Director of the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge. Ernest had won the Marlborough Education Board scholarship to Nelson College in 1877. The element Rf was named Rutherfordium in honor of Rutherford. In 1895, Ernest was awarded an Exhibition of 1851 Science Research Scholarship. He was also knighted in the New Year’s Honors list for 1914. Ernest became a member of the Order of Merit in the New Year’s Honors list for 1925. In 1916, Rutherford was awarded the Hector Memorial Medal. He was awarded a research fellowship and when he was awarded it, it allowed him to attend graduate school at University of Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory. He had won the only available Senior Scholarship for mathematics. In 1898, Rutherford was rewarded the opportunity to become a physics professor at McGill University in Montreal and he accepted the offer. In 1904, Rutherford had his first book “Radioactivity”…
In his article, “Marie Theresa Lasselle,” Dennis M. Au explores the life of Marie Theresa Lasselle and gives a rare look into women who were involved in the fur trade. Lasselle was born May 1, 1735 and as Au explains, Lasselle grew up in Montreal where she was part “ of the upper class, her parents evidently sent her off to school.” Au claims that it was rare in that time that girls in Canada were able to get an education.…
I am Catholic so I believe in a just and fair world. In this story, it sounds far from just that. In this story, racism is still a big thing around the time this story takes place. Henrietta is a poor black woman who is treated unfairly in the Hopkins hospital due to that fact she is black. She could have possibly been saved and probably would have if she was white. Her cells were stolen and the Lacks family did not even know about until HeLa cells were on the front pages on the newspapers. I personally think that by the end of the story, the Lacks family should have been paid at least, at least a fourth of all the money that was made from Henrietta’s cells. My faith would be strongly against how this family had been treated throughout the story before any type of recognitions were given to Henrietta and not just here cells which were called HeLa cells so almost no one knew her name, even students learning about the cells in school.…
After reading the book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, what stood out was the root of how Henrietta’s cells went universal. A sample of cervical tissue was taken and a doctor asked David or Day to do an autopsy on Henrietta for the sake of their children. By using Normandale’s College Library course quick start, searching for an article of interest took some time. In Academic Search Premier, I read a few like Our Body, Our Cells; and Returning the Blessings Of an Immortal Life. I then typed HIPAA into the search engine. The first and most recent one was titled HIPAA Fine Is a First by Jessica Zigmond. In this essay, I will relate the article to the book by bringing to surface thoughts you may or may not have critically pondered throughout the reading.…
In movies, television shows, and books, countless supermen, superwomen, and cartoon heroes have been portrayed as escaping death, of being immortal. But, they have all been fictional characters and figments of imaginations, because as we all know, no one can live forever. In the book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot introduces us to Henrietta and her life and tells us the story of the immortal HeLa cells. In essence, Henrietta is a superwoman, a real-life hero who has transcended race, advanced medicine, and saved millions of lives, without even knowing it.…
In her novel, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, author Rebecca Skloot addresses the many variations of ethics by telling the readers about the life of a poor African American Southern tobacco worker living in a time where racism was apparent. In 1951, Henrietta was diagnosed with cervical cancer when she was 30 and reseachers had taken her cells without her permission. The major concern that arises in the novel in my opinion is the lack of informed consent and knowledge given to Henrietta before and her family afterwards. Regardless of race, gender, or socio-economic status, doctors and researchers have a moral obligation to inform their patients thoroughly, provide them with side-effects that may occur, and to communicate properly with the family in case of death. While these and some other issues are merely portrayls, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks provides a narrative field within which these issues can be observed by reflecting on the experiences of many different individuals.…
Racism is immortal just like Henrietta’s cells it will always be around. People would do anything to be the first to discover something. At the end of the day it’s all about the money. The Mississippi appendectomies and the Tuskegee experiments were similar in the way that the government forced treatment upon minorities without consent. Henrietta’s case was different than Mississippi and Tuskegee because the doctor in Johns Hopkins didn’t experiment on her actual body but on her cells without consent. Henrietta’s case the Tuskegee experiments and the Mississippi Appendectomies are all different cases in different locations but serve the same purpose which is to take advantage of poor and uneducated minorities to further medical research.…
His daughter continued her father’s legacy by majoring in chemistry. Many years later, she started a Queens College scholarship fund in his honor to assist minority students majoring in chemistry or physics. She studied at Columbia university she majored in Chemistry, after that she earned her Ph.D., When Marie graduated she did nothing but studied the human body. I was proud of her because she was the first woman to go to college most women weren’t allowed at a lot of colleges. What got her in science was influenced by her father, who had attended Cornell University with intentions of becoming a chemist, but had been unable to complete his education due to a lack of funds. His daughter continued her father’s legacy by majoring in chemistry. Many years later, she started a Queens College scholarship fund in his honor to assist minority students majoring in chemistry or physics. But she had some problems trying to get in school but she solved that problem by keep trying to accomplish her dream. She started teaching at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, she continued research on arteries and the effects of cigarette smoke on the lungs in April, 1947. That was good because she affected the world because she inspires other women to get their degrees. It also inspired me…
Topic: What is the duty of a medical doctor/researcher to inform his/her subjects on the implications of their medical consent? Historically, how does social justice play a role in this relationship?…
Gerty Cori is well known as the first American woman who has achieved a Physiology or medicine Nobel Price. She was born on August 15, 1896, in Prague. In the age of ten, she became interested in science and mathematics and has entered the Realgymnasium at Tetschen. After she graduated in 1971 she then joined the medical school of German and met her fellow friend Carl Cori, who shared her hobbies and laboratory research. During 1920 they both work together and had published the result of their first research collaboration and had completed their graduation and then got married. In 1922 Carl Cori…
Although I never met her, Marie Curie is someone who has inspired me and has had a positive impact on my life. I have always held an unyielding interest in science, but was cast aside by a number of teachers and peers. One excellent example is a ‘friend’ who would mock my interests, belittle anything remotely scientific I said, and would invent false accomplishments to try and make himself seem more superior (he actually tried to make me believe that he beat out renowned professors to get his theory of relativity published in the Canadian archives but couldn’t show it to me because it was “top secret”). Reading about Marie Curie and what she was able to accomplish, despite all the difficulties of being a woman in science in the 1800-1900s,…