Throughout the book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Skloot compares the ethical sacrifices that the doctors made with the impressive progression in medicine. Henrietta Lacks was a black woman who was diagnosed with cervical cancer at Johns Hopkins. During the first treatment, Dr. Lawrence Wharton Jr. did something before the treatment that would be condemned in modern medicine.
“But first—though no one had told Henrietta that TeLinde was collecting samples or asked if she wanted to be a donor—Wharton picked up a sharp knife and shaved two dim-sized pieces of tissue from Henrietta’s cervix…” (33).
This was done due to Dr. George Gey’s goal was to somehow grow immortal cells. He was another doctor at Johns Hopkins and often non consensually took biopsies of patients, violating hundreds of privacy. The two pieces of tissues were later transported to Dr. Gey’s lab, where the later named HeLa cells grew immortally. This event led to a big conflict: to protect or not to protect one’s privacy?
Another incident involved Chester Southam, who was a virologist, wanted to understand what would happen when HeLa cells are injected into humans. The way Southam conducted this experiment was problematic.
“[Southam] repeated this process with about a dozen other cancer patients. He told them he was testing their immune systems; he said nothing about injecting them with someone else’s malignant cells” (128).
Southam did not inform his patients properly, violating their privacy and bodies. Imagine being injected with malignant cells thinking that they are for your immune systems.
Informed consent is essential in medical practices. Martin Salgo was not informed of any risks of his procedure.
“He went under anesthesia for what he thought was a routine procedure and woke up permanently paralyzed from the waist down” (132).
This did not only violate Martin’s privacy as a person, but also put him at such a dangerous risk. Doctors treated patients as
Privacy being ignored for one’s own benefits occurs frequently. Most of the times, news would report a celebrity’s social media being hacked. Even Mark Zuckerberg’s own Facebook page was hacked. These hackers disregard the privacy of the original owners of the accounts often for the fun. Other time, professional hackers do earn money from hacking intothe accounts and obtaining private information. This modern example of ignoring other people’s privacy also shows how different periods of time can affect the same kind of situation.
Citation
Skloot, Rebecca. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. New York, Random House, 2010.
This essay I recorded is about how my little sister is my best friend. My little sister is 5 years old and her name is Andrea. I wish you would enjoy this essay. Have fun and relax.
The bright red sun shone down on our big, red school. It was a September afternoon. Our school is far from my house. It takes about 30 minutes to get to school. That is why I need to take the bus, but I did not take the bus this morning, because my dad drove me to school.
Ding! The bell rang. It was 3:10, and it was time to go home.
“Class may be dismissed!” Ms.Lyon, our First grade teacher, said.
People stuffed our blue homework folder and our books into our backpacks.
“Bye, Ms.Lyon!” I said.
“Good bye, Ms. Lyon!” my friend, Gloria, said.
“Have a nice day, girls!” Ms.Lyon said.
“You too!” we both said.
I was so excited about riding the bus, because my bus is the same as Gloria’s! This is my first time riding the bus! Well, not really, because last time I missed the bus.
We ran to the school’s parking lot. “One, two, three, and four! Wow! Four buses!” I said with excitement.
“Hey, Gloria, why do they have four buses?” I asked.
For a few seconds Gloria didn’t answer. I looked around. No, she was not there.
“Allison! Come on! Our bus is the third one! 2B is our bus number!” I heard a familiar voice called.
Then I saw Gloria waving her hands at me in front of the third big purple bus. And she was way ahead of me.
“Okay!” I shouted as loud as I could.
“I have to run! You can’t miss the bus again! You are still in front of the first bus! Even though the teachers outside the school’s parking lot said you can’t run, you still have to!” I said to myself.
Then I ran as fast as I could to get to Gloria.
“Hi,” I said panting. “Are you sure this is the bus,2B?”
“Yes, I’m totally sure,” Gloria said. “Go and check. There is the number ,2B, in the front of the bus.”
I checked, it really was there. So, I leaped into the bus, which has chinese characters that I don’t understood.
When I got into the bus, I saw a lot of different things on this bus. It did not look like the school bus in America. In America the aisle is super, duper small that our teacher, Ms. Kelly, has to walk like a crab, when we went to field trips. On this bus, the aisle is big, at least bigger than the aisle in America.
And it did not look like the seats in the shuttle bus in Taipei. There are two rows of one seat and at the back it has two in Taipei. But on this bus, it has two rows of two seats, and at the back it has five.
On the bus a few kids, I think about six or seven years old were playing cards. And there were some kids, bigger than me, laughing and giggling. At the very back, I saw some of the high school students talking loudly and playing their phones.
Then I saw someone walking towards Gloria and I. He was wearing a dark blue T-shirt and shorts.
“I saw him before. He was the guy I saw when my mom was talking to Mr.Lin, our school manager, that I was going to ride the bus in September,” I thought to myself.
“Hi. Your name is Allison, right?” I looked up. It was that guy talking to me.
“Yes,” I said in a small, shy voice.
“Don’t be shy. I’m the bus monitor, Kevin,” Kevin said.
“Okay,” I said.
“Welcome to our bus,2B. You may sit next to Gloria, it is in front of that back door,” he said pointing to the seats in front of the back door. Then he held out his hand. I put mine on to his, and shaked it.
Then he went to the back of the bus with his friends.
A few moments later, I stood up. Since the bus driver was not driving the bus, I explored the bus. I looked out of the window on the other row’s seats. There were a bunch of cars.
When I was going back to my seat, I saw Ms. Lyon in front of the back door.
“Hi, Ms. Lyon,” I said.
“Hi, Allison. I am just making sure you are on this bus,” Ms.Lyon said.
“Oh,” I said.
“Remember to come to this bus everyday afternoon, okay?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said.
I still remember this whole story. Now, about everyday afternoon I ride the bus home, and I feel more independent now.
The day before the Lunar Chinese New Year (1/29), we had a dance. We were celebrating the day before, because we have no school on the Lunar Chinese New Year(1/30). The basketball court was really hot because we were outside, and the bright red sun was shining down on us. First grade through Fourth grade were performing. People were watching us. My dad was there, being ready to video tape me.
The third graders finished dancing with their blue and red chinese paper fans. And that meant the people who were doing the cartwheels needed to do their cartwheels.
There were six people who were doing the cartwheel, because there are two fourth grade classes. For our class Eric, Antonio and I were doing the cartwheels.
When Eric almost finished his cartwheel, I started doing my cartwheels.
Suddenly, I felt a big push. I knew it. It was Antonio who kicked my leg and I fell down. It was painful! But I just ignored the pain and started doing the cartwheels weakly.
Then I heard people laughing, laughing at me?
And I thought, “Were they laughing at me? Or not?”
When we were done, we ran back to our dancing spot, where our bags of colorful air balloons were located. In the balloons, were lucky words. We made our air balloons in Chinese class. The colorful air balloons were really made out of colorful papers. And the balloons is shaped liked a cube.
I threw the balloons toward my dad, and he picked two balloons up. The two balloons he picked up was the purple one, and the blue one.
This story is about this girl named Amanda. and it was her birthday. But, outside the door was this mysterious gift. And there was a card that wrote To: Amanda. So, she picked it up. What is in there? Will something happen? You’ll find out in 2022.
On my Christmas Break my sister and I went to Taipei 101 to be my mom’s cousin’s bouquet’s flower girl. When we got in we were confused, because we didn’t know where to go. After asking a lot of people, we finally found our destination. When we got there, we quickly practice what we were doing. At first I was really scared to, but at last I thought it was not too scary. My sister and I thought it was so fun to be a flower girl. We all want to do it again.
My favorite movie is Silver Linings Playbook. It is about how one guy named Pat and a other girl named Tiffany meets. After Pat gets out of the hospital he was really happy. he went out and started jogging to his friend Ronnie’s house. Ronnie asked him if he wanted to come to dinner on Sunday and he said yes. When he came to his friend’s house he met Ronnie’s wife’s little sister Tiffany. They are both single because Tiffany’s husband died and Pat’s wife left him. Then they started to be friends.
