Key:
Lorium Ipsum: Assignment Question
Lorium Ipsum: Quote from text
Lorium Ipsum: Patrick's words of wisdom
1. Copy and paste into your blog post one showing scene that illustrates compelling action--and then write a commentary about why you think this scene works so well (e.g., grabs your attention or moves the story along).
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The next morning Henrietta climbed from the Buick outside Hopkins again, telling Day and the children not to worry.
"Ain't nothin' serious wrong," she said. "Doctor's gonna fix me right up."
Henrietta went straight to the admissions desk and told the receptionist she was there for her treatment. Then she signed a form with the words operation permit at the top of the page. It said:
I hereby give consent to the staff of The Johns Hopkins Hospital to perform any operative procedures and under any anaesthetic either local or general that they may deem necessary in the proper surgical care and treatment of:
______________________________.
Henrietta printed her name in the blank space. A witness with illegible handwriting signed a line at the bottom of the form, and Henrietta signed another."
I feel that the above scene is the biggest climax in the whole story; everything is merging into one point. If Henrietta Lacks had to write a "this I wonder" essay, it would be about the decision shown in the passage above. Does she sign the paper, and relinquish virtually all her freedom? Or does she ignore her medical situation, as she has done before, knowing that it would be a death sentence? It's not easy to give up power, control, freedom. They are more valuable than any precious stone or metal, or any tangible object at all. This scene is a major (if not THE major) turning point, the big decision, which changes the course of the story. Such an exciting climax of events easily grabs the reader's attention, and by nature, the climax of a story is meant to move the story along
2. Copy and paste into your blog post one telling scene that provides insightful information (via background context or reflection)--and then write a commentary about why you think this telling scene is integral to the story's meaning. Consider critiquing a telling scene that helped you learn more about the topic.
"George Gey sent Henrietta's cells to any scientist who wanted them for cancer research. HeLa cells rode into the mountains of Chile in the saddlebags of pack mules and flew around the country in the breast pockets of researchers until they were growing in laboratories in Texas, Amsterdam, India, and many places in between. The Tuskegee Institute set up facilities to mass-produce Henrietta's cells, and began shipping 20,000 tubes of HeLa—about six trillion cells—every week. And soon, a multibillion-dollar industry selling human biological materials was born.
HeLa cells allowed researchers to perform experiments that would have been impossible with a living human. Scientists exposed them to toxins, radiation, and infections. They bombarded them with drugs, hoping to find one that would kill malignant cells without destroying normal ones. They studied immune suppression and cancer growth by injecting HeLa into rats with weak immune systems, who developed malignant tumors much like Henrietta's. And if the cells died in the process, it didn't matter—scientists could just go back to their eternally growing HeLa stock and start over again."
These two paragraphs sum up why this story, this woman, and this phenominon, "matter", for lack of a better word. This sounds very callous, and it is. But please, let's keep it real: Without these two paragraphs, I could probably find another story that's almost identical to it. Poor black woman grows up poor, has kids, falls ill, and dies of cancer. This, relative to what actually happened, would be a rather common story. But the context of the fact that those cells helped, and continues to help research to fight almost every disease known to man? THAT is what makes this story noteworthy. Without this context, Henrietta's story would be swallowed up by time, and lost in the sea of people that have existed on this earth. What a depressing though, huh? That's life for ya.
ps: Before reading this, I didn't know cells could live forever. That concept is STILL baffling me. I know from personal knowledge that we age because the ends of the strands of our DNA, called telomeres, deteriorate over time, eventually leading to signs of old age. What's baffling me is how these HeLa cells avoid this breakdown of telomeres. This really helped me learn about the topic, however, and I learned new things.
3. Write a commentary about how Henrietta Lacks' decision to visit the doctor impacted her life, her family's life, and the life of future patients. Feel free to use direct quotes from the text to support your claim.
Henrietta Lacks, backed into a corner, put her hands in the care of Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. This effected people she didn't know, in ways that she didn't, and couldn't understand. She was impacted by it because signing that paper forced her to relinquish most, if not all of her freedom. (for quote, see my answer to the second question in this post) She could no longer walk away from the appointments and pretend that her health problems didn't exist. She had to face the music, a difficult thing to do.
This effected everyone in the world, some in different ways. Her family suffered. Henrietta left 5 kids to be taken cared for, which puts unimaginable (to me, at least) strain and stress on her family. They must have had a hard(er) life because of this.
The rest of the world, however, benefitted from Henrietta's visit. Without it, the HeLa cells could never have been aquired. Those cells have benefited the rest of the world's quality of life in a multitude of ways, and will continue to benefit humanity. But it's a shame that this story isn't common knowledge. It should be much more well-known; Henrietta at least deserves that.
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