The First Year Book is a tradition at Maryland. It’s given to you for free (which is great since you’ve probably just started buying your own books), and it’s given to you so you may engage in a conversation with the University community.
Keep in mind that your views are not right wrong; they are your views. I only ask that you engage in respectful conversation with others. Many of the topics we have explored over the past 18 years have been controversial: the death penalty, global warming, issues of race, class and identity, to name just a few. Often these topics challenge us to examine what we really believe.
The project began back in 1993 from when a student decided that she wanted a new tradition, one that involved something academic. Since there is not one course that all students take, she decided she wanted a first year book, much like ones at smaller schools.
Since that time we’ve introduced 19 books to first year students at Maryland. We’ve had fiction, biography, plays and poems, the intent of each one to generate dialogue among students and faculty members.
The author, Rebecca Skloot tells the story of Ms. Lacks’ illness and subsequent death from cancer and the cells taken from her which grew and grew and grew, and as a result, were used in some of the most pressing medical research of the 20th century, such as polio and AIDS.
What makes this story so compelling is that is this: her family, living in poverty and ill health were followed by Johns Hopkins researchers for many years. Her husband and children were led to believe that physicians were monitoring the family’s cancer risk.
The story is a local one, chronicling the family’s move from the south to better employment opportunities for African Americans during WWII. Ms. Lacks had to travel 20 miles to be treated at JHU because it was the closest hospital that would see African Americans.
And years later, when the family found out about Henrietta’s legacy, there arose suspicion in the Black community, recalling images of the Tuskegee and the Mississippi Appendectomy studies.
So I invite you to join me in discussing The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.
Rebecca Skloot embarks on a tremulous journey of bioethics in her book, “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks”. Skloot spends a decade of her life searching and researching the life of a woman only known as HeLa to most of the medical profession. Although there were many themes and issues throughout the book, I found myself focusing on how Skloot exposes the difficult question of how science is to advance ethically using the tissue samples of human beings. I see the difficulty not only whether the tissues samples should be used for research to promote medical advancement but also how it should be conducted and who should benefit from it.
ReplyDeleteThe answer to the question of consent and money is not easy. People’s religion, race, family, personalities, and beliefs all play an integral part of the answer. For me, I would want to give my tissue to science if it was going to help other people and I wouldn’t need to be asked but I would like to be told. I would like to follow what good came of my tissue. Would I want to be paid? Maybe. If they are my property and someone else is making millions off it, I might want to get a small percentage. I don’t think of my cells as something I own just something I have; like a shirt someone might need to borrow. For others, it may be entirely different.
It was interesting and eye opening to see through Skloot’s book, how much confusion and disenchantment occurred in one family’s life because Henrietta was not offered consent to sign for her tissue. Henrietta became a learning tool for all of us, as her cells were the first human cells to survive. The nucleus, the cell wall, the mitochondria are all parts of a cell to scientists but they are all parts of a mother to her children and parts of a wife to her husband. Scientists and government officials had to rethink what was right and what was wrong. Henrietta’s family would probably have given her cells to the doctors because they wanted to help advance science. In the end, all they wanted was for someone to ask.
Do you remember going to the doctors office and getting your Polio vaccine? Probably not. Even more so, you probably didn’t even stop to think about how it was even discovered. That’s okay; most people don’t, including myself, until I read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot.
ReplyDeleteHenrietta Lacks is sadly more well known in the medical field by her cells “HeLa” than by her own name. From studies of her cells, not only was the polio vaccine created, but they were used to help discover treatments for cancer, help those with in-fertilization issues, and countless other diseases - and those are just a few of the things that we know of! There are countless other ways HeLa cells are used, helping us daily in ways we probably don’t even know!
Most people didn’t know Mrs. Lacks’ name for several reasons, the biggest one being an error made when her name was printed as Helen Lane. Only years later, as a tribute to the scientist who first cultivated her cells, was her correct name printed, and her story began to be told.
This narrative book written by Rebecca Skloot is one of the ways that the author thought could be used to give credit for the all-encompassing discoveries that have made possible by the cells taken from Henrietta Lacks. She uses her book to shine a light on an individual we owe much more credit than she has received to date. The book was written with the help of the immediate Lacks’ family, particularly Mrs. Lacks only surviving daughter, Deborah “Dale” Lacks.
Issues such as social obligations come up, and the ever-sensitive topic of race. Add moral and ethic issues, and the author has written a book that makes the reader struggle for whose side to be on. Only through reading the book does one fully come to understand that to know the Lacks family is to know who Henrietta was. She fought for everything she needed in life, and fought to the end. However, we can only hope that through Skloot’s book will the memory of Henrietta Lacks not fade through time, but become brighter with each new disease cure discovered from her cells.
Bizot, BSCI105-5144
Prior to reading The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot I did not know who Henrietta Lacks was, yet alone some of the things she made possible. It was amazing to me how a story about science and cells could be so interesting. The book itself addressed issues such as race, class, and ethics amongst other issues that exist now and the time of Henrietta’s existence. The Journalist and author of the book does a great job telling the story from both an objective and subjective point of view. The different views help me read and better understand the Lacks’. This is a family that had to struggle with the death of a loved one mean while deal with some of the very issues she faced. It is ironic how Henrietta died and her cells contributed to research and the life of many others but her family could not afford to go to the doctors. I think the family could at least be compensated in some way and others may disagree but this is particular situation is very complex. Henrietta’s cells were the only ones that grew at alarming rates at the time and in result are all around the world today but people made profits off of her cells and I think that is where the issue stems from. If there were cures or research performed and no one profited from the discovery I am sure the family would not feel so angry. The idea that Henrietta’s cells were taken without her permission is a question of ethics and justice itself. In the section entitled “Afterwards” Skloot could not have added a better quote to sum up how complicated the issue of donating and not donating tissue can be. On page 321 the second paragraph that that reads “Science is not the highest value in society,” Andrews says, pointing instead to things like autonomy and personal freedom……control over their tissues.” The paragraph basically sums up the idea that when money and cells are used interchangeably the argument of whether or not something is right or wrong is changed. Van Valen tried to rename HeLa cells on the basis that they were evolving separately from human cells and even today some researchers argue that its not factually correct to say HeLa cells are related to Henrietta because DNA is no longer genetically linked to hers but Robert Stevenson disagreed (page 216). He mentions that it is easier to do science when you disassociate your materials from the people they come from and I think this is very important because it shows how complex ethics, science, reasoning and research methods can be and how time periods and individuals can impact them all.
ReplyDeleteI found an article written about her by John Hopkins magazine... I did want to see them write more about how much culpability they feel that their hospital had because of what happened, but at least they made a start.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.jhu.edu/jhumag/0400web/01.html
Amber Shriver