Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Provision of health care is therefore a social function and a social process. Linking it
directly to Wheelock College's goal.
Skloot weaves a fantastic scientific tale of immortality and living forever. Popular
myths which gain and hold the public's attention. She masterfully describes the complex science
under girding this popular fantasy. And her treatment is spellbinding.
But we are not here, not here today, to console by focusing in order to obscure. In our analysis,
this remarkable tale will be spun in the gritty, historically flawed, and increasingly dark
compromise and threatening world that is the contemporary United States.
Skloot's book epitomizes both a scientific windfall and a detached representation of
a human tragedy. In 1951 there was only one place in the world one could find healer cells.
That was on the *** of Mrs. Henrietta Lacks. Because of her symptoms she was seen by a
physician a Johns Hopkins Hospital, in a racially segregated clinic designated for indigent,
free, or charity colored patients.
A random biopsy of her ***, or the mouth of her womb, was taken without her consent--
underscored. It contained cells that possessed a survival vigor far surpassing that of any
human cells known to man then or now.
How these cells were immediately grown in tissue culture, multiplied, were utilized,
perpetuated, and then marketed by Johns Hopkins University producing a foundation for today's
breakthroughs in cell biology, oncology, immunology, cloning research, polio research, biochemistry,
transplant research, in vitro fertilization. Virology, space medicine, and much, much,
more is a wondrous and awe-inspiring inspiring tale.
Skloots renders a practical demonstration in popular educational tool revealing the
power of American science.
On the backside, it also reveals a 392-year-old health system and health cultural dilemma.
Ominously afflicting the United States health system.