Damanpreet Singh
Ms. Allen
Biotechnology – Period 6
23 May 2018
Henrietta Lacks Reading Extra Credit Assignment Responses
Prologue: The Woman in the Photograph
1. The author utilizes the following simile to describe a cell’s appearance: “a cell looks a lot like a fried egg.” She utilizes the following simile to explain cell functions: “The cytoplasm buzzes like a New York City street.” The use of these similes suggests that biology mimics many daily operations that we as human beings encounter on a macro scale. Biology works to explain the study of life in the most relatable way possible and as such we as humans begin to model our daily routines and structures based off of basic biological factors like the cell itself.
2. Mitosis is the process of cell division. It involves the following beneficial biological processes: making it possible for embryos to grow into babies and for human bodies to create new cells for healing wounds or replenishing lost blood.
3. Defler describes mitosis through the simile “like a perfectly choreographed dance.”
4. A single mistake in the process of mitosis results in cancer.
5. Defler states that the discovery of HeLa cells stands as one of the most important things in medicine in the last 100 years.
6. She looked up Henrietta Lacks in a biology textbook and found a small parenthetical mentioning her. She then looked her up in her parents’ encyclopedia and the dictionary but found nothing. During her years pursuing her biology degree, Skloot heard nothing about Henrietta. When she got a computer for the first time, she found some information regarding Lacks but they all were very varied and rarely matched up. Eventually she found some magazines, especially the Ebony, which gave some more detailed and genuine remarks on Lacks and the reality of what happened to her. And from there she went on discovering the woman named Henrietta Lacks.
Chapter One: The Exam
1. Henrietta waited one year.
2. Sadie thought Henrietta kept it secret so a doctor wouldn’t take her womb and stop her from having more children.
3. Henrietta’s first doctor attributed the lump to a sore from syphilis. This diagnosis may draw upon a prevalent stereotype of black people carrying syphilis more often than others.
4. It was the only major hospital for miles that treated black patients.
5. Jim Crow laws were laws in place during the time of segregation in America – people of color could only go to “colored” sections only.
6. Henrietta’s gynecologist was Howard Jones.
7. I infer that Henrietta declines many referrals from her medical providers and tests. She lives a very simple life and is fairly uneducated and she suffers from a lot of pain in her life, whether that be loss of family or personal health issues.
8. Henrietta doesn’t listen well to her doctors and rarely, if never, takes their advice in terms of referrals or follow-ups.
9. He found that she had a term delivery at Johns Hopkins Hospital and that no note was made in the history of the time or of any abnormalities during the six-week return. This leads to believe that her cancer grew at a terrifying rate.
Chapter Two: Clover
1. Her father was a squatter and as such ill-suited to raise his children. So, they got split up amongst relatives and Henrietta ended up with her grandfather.
2. The “home-house” used to be slave quarters and as such is a very dry and ominous place. This suggests that the Lacks family doesn’t care much for material possessions or brightening up a place. They just need a place to sleep and live the bare minimum.
3. Day is also a biological grandchild of Henrietta’s biological grandfather.
4. I found the paragraph stretching pages 19 and 20 quite effective in describing her childhood as it stated clearly that Henrietta and Day live quite close as they became a married couple and did pretty much everything together.
5. Crazy Joe was madly in love with Henrietta but she failed to feel the same way towards him. She only reluctantly went on a few dates with him.
6. She was fourteen.
7. Elise had a mental disorder.
8. The first set of terms are respectful and more scientific. They remain anonymous and don’t make the person feel ashamed. The latter set of terms does the exact opposite and bars people like Elise from the community.
9. Pearl Harbor increased the steel demand which boosted profits.
10. Black workers got the jobs white workers didn’t want. The black workers worked in very dangerous and fatal conditions and were paid less than their white counterparts.
Chapter Three: Diagnosis and Treatment
1. They are categorized based on the type of cell they start from.
2. Dr. TeLinde believed that cervical cancers began at early stages as harmless and insignificant but would definitely become invasive and deadly if left untreated.
3. The Pap smear could potentially decrease the death rate by 70+ % as it would clear up what many misidentified or misunderstood in terms of cancer itself and/or its various stages. This would then enable proper treatment going forward.
4. Scientists believe that free treatment in public wards served as payment and consent. I disagree as that should be part of it but regardless, written approval must be obtained so they maintain a sense of integrity and honesty.
5. He hoped to find a way to grow living samples from normal cervical tissue and both types of cancerous tissue and compare all three. He hoped to prove that both types of cancer tissue behaved the same.
6. Gey was the head of tissue culture research as Hopkins.
7. A continuously dividing line of cells all descended from one original sample – cells that would continuously replenish themselves and never die out.
8. Gey wished to find the first line of immortal cells and TeLinde was the outlet to that. In return for a supply of cervical cancer tissues, Gey permitted TeLinde to try and grow some cells.
9. No because this statement is too general and can easily abused.
10. I believe that Henrietta would have probably given explicit consent if asked to use her tissue in research as a means of finding a cure. However, I doubt she would be able to comprehend the complexities of the procedures or the basic sciences behind it.
11. Cells were taken from all patients because anyone could possibly have immortal cells. Black patients had different wards than white patients because of Jim Crow laws.
Chapter Four: The Birth of HeLa
1. Many of the obstacles Gey and his asstistants faced included the cells dying off too soon, trouble finding the right medium to hold the cells in study in, gathering materials, contamination, etc.
2. It came from the name Henrietta Lacks.
3. Gey’s personality is lucrative, resourceful, and a somewhat workaholic.
4. Gey’s roller-tube culturing technique captures a cell-growth process with the aid of a camera at speeds so slow that what once couldn’t be seen with the naked eye can now be seen and examined.
5. At first, they failed to react and remained completely stable. Then after two days, they began growing at a great rate, twenty times faster than Henrietta’s normal cells.
6. No, because this remains an unethical and rushed decision that could hold dire consequences.
7. No, she was not.
8. By using the term “birth,” the author creates an image of this new creation as in a new creation with typical births.
Chapter Five: “Blackness Be Spreadin’ All Inside”
1. Henrietta behaved normally and returned to her typical life and actually began enjoying life even more. I infer that her personality is easy-going and optimistic.
2. They say she was jealous of Henrietta.
3. Elise’s childhood was pretty peaceful and calm as she watched her mother work and chased the turkeys.
4. Elise was too big for Henrietta to handle alone and the doctors said that that was the best thing to do.
5. Henrietta went to Crownsville once a week to visit and sit with Elise.
6. I believe Henrietta chose to keep the cancer a secret because of the time she lived in. It suggests that she adheres to cultural norms and rules.
7. He failed to tell her that she would be left infertile. She said she wouldn’t have gone through with the treatment if told prior.
Chapter Six: “Lady’s On the Phone”
1. Roland Pattillo is a professor of gynecology and was connected to both Henrietta and Gey as he was the only African-American student of Gey’s.
2. Researchers from the Tuskegee Institute wish the understand how syphilis dies in its entire life span. They believe black people to be prevalent in syphilis.
3. Black people are poor and uneducated.
4. I believe he agreed as a way of finding more information regarding Lacks’ family.
5. She had epilepsy and died at age 15.
6. She responds positively as she feels it is an attempt to learn of Henrietta the woman, not Henrietta the cells.
7. The questions regard whether Henrietta breastfed her, her favorite color, whether she loved to dance.
8. Day seemed like he was unimpressed by the questions being asked of him, he felt they were common knowledge in a sense.
Chapter Seven: The Death and Life of Cell Culture
1. Gey hoped to find a cure for cancer.
2. HeLa cells allowed scientists to do tests they never did before and see how they reacted.
3. Carrel was a French surgeon at the Rockefeller Institute who won the Nobel Prize for his suturing technique and contributions to organ transplants.
4. They made the conclusion that this announcement leads to the belief that death is no more, it is no longer inevitable, and people can possibly be immortal.
5. He believed that whites were superior polluted by poor, uneducated non-white people. As such, he believed immortality for whites and death for all others.
6. The use of a 1930’s radio horror show Lights Out.
7. They defied the basic rule of biology that normal cells only divide at a finite number of times before dying.
Chapter Eight: “A Miserable Specimen”
1. He assumed she will be fine and it went well; he reminded her to return in a month.
2. The doctors refused her claim.
3. The doctor knows what’s best for the patient regardless what the patient actually feels.
4. When she returned, and they noticed she feels pain.
5. Henrietta’s extreme pain is expressed through her chronic illness, a clear indication of pain.
6. Regardless all her pain and misery, Henrietta would pull herself out of bed and watch her children play.
7. It reveals how poor Henrietta was in such pain (miserable) but also how her cells were unknowingly being used (specimen).
8. I doubt this as George Gey fails to strike me as a very friendly man – he just utilized patients for his quest for immortal cell.
9. I believe Henrietta would’ve understood that her cells are quite important but fail to understand the much deeper complexities due to her lack of a sufficient education and exposure to medical terminology and practices.
Chapter Nine: Turner Station
1. She visited Turner Station.
2. The Turner Stations Skloot visits in 1999 stands as a run-down and crime infested town full of boarded up buildings. During a young Henrietta Lacks’ time, the town was booming with rising employment due to the boom in steel production.
3. The town is very religious and very dependent on their religion.
4. A store owner in Turner Station trying to start a foundation in honor of Henrietta.
5. She is a kind and fair woman who tries to keep order.
6. Coefield exploited the family and prevented the building of the library and museum.
7. Skloot realizes she needs to go visit Henrietta’s family.
Chapter Ten:: The Other Side of the Tracks
1. The much worse and more impoverished side.
2. Life was tough and rigid to go through.
3. He was her cousin.
4. Cootie had polio.
5. He remembers when Henrietta helped him when he received the polio vaccine and believes they were made to help others as he was helped by her.
6. He believes some voodoo spirit brought it.
Chapter Eleven: “The Devil of Pain Itself”
1. It spread rapidly which made doctors conclude it was invasive cancer. A month before Lacks’ death, her entire body was overtaken by tumors which lead to her bladder and intestines even being blocked.
2. She had a blood bank deficit.
3. They all offered to donate their own blood as a way of repaying her all the help she gave them through the years.
4. All Henrietta requested was that her children be taken care of, a clear indicator of her motherly affection.
Chapter Twelve: The Storm
1. Laws and regulations made it plain in regard to the illegality of taking tissue from the dead without familial permission. As such, Day said no.
2. He was told that is would that it would aid his children in the future through persuasion from the doctor and his cousin, who said it wouldn’t hurt.
3. She realized that these cells came from a live woman and was ironic as she realized this at the time of Henrietta’s death.
4. It began to rain which led to a big storm of thunder and dark sky.
5. I believe Henrietta was warning her family about something regarding the HeLa cells.
Chapter Thirteen: The HeLa Factory
1. If the vaccine works, serum from vaccinated child’s blood blocks polio virus. This would protect the cells.
2. As opposed to typical non-HeLa cells, HeLa cells don’t have a limit regarding space (they’re much more flexible).
3. It would provide much funding, jobs, and training opportunities for young scientists.
4. It is ironic for black scientists are using cells from a black woman to cure the lives of white people. This still reveals that race relations aren’t as peaceful as they could be, they still are rough.
5. Viruses inject some genetic material into a living cell which reprograms it to reproduce the virus, not the normal cells. HeLa cells thus grew faster.
6. Cells could be “paused” whenever needed in the midst of an experiment for use of comparison.
7. Standardization is important as it serves as a more accurate and constant process and it serves as a way to increase HeLa cells.
8. They clone the cells for the cells behave in many ways regardless originating from the same sample.
9. Thanks to HeLa, the discovery of 46 chromosomes was possible.
10. They are responsible for the shipment of the cells to research facilities.
11. Samuel Reader and Monroe Vincent profited.
12. I disagree for by releasing the research early, Gey enabled it to spread widely and continue at a much faster pace than when he was conducting it alone.
13. He profited through his increased reputation and credibility.
Chapter Fourteen: Helen Lane
1. Two years
2. He was interested in the story and wished to publish it in a popular magazine.
3. They gave permission to present the story as long as the name of the patient was kept out of it for the sake of privacy.
4. Throughout the story, her name was inaccurate.
5. The true reality of the cells came out, but unfortunately the name was incorrect and unidentifiable.
6. They would feel sad and cheated. They would regret Henrietta’s death even more.
Chapter Fifteen: “Too Young to Remember”
1. Lawrence was 4 and Joe was 1.
2. They wished to aid with the children.
3. She wanted to take out her hate for Henrietta on the kids.
4. She hit him for no reason and left him in a dark room tied up in rope for a whole night. The accumulation of this abuse left him full of rage and hate the rest of his life.
5. Deborah’s childhood was unfortunately full of Ethel’s abuse who made her work all day and Galen’s sexual abuse. Challenges she had to overcome included the constant abuse from Ethel and Galen.
6. Deborah wished to know her mother and what happened to her sister. I believe no one told her about them much for they either didn’t know much or they didn’t want her to be saddened by the stories about them.
Chapter Sixteen: “Spending Eternity in the Same Place”
1. The imagery lets you imagine what the cemetery looks like. The cemetery was difficult to find and run amuck with a lot of tombstones that aren’t properly labeled.
2. They are all dead in the same place regardless what happened in the segregated land of the living.
3. They are blood related; they are related through Alber, Arbet, Winston, and Benjamin Lacks.
4. When Albert died, he left his land to Tommy Lacks, Henrietta’s grandfather.
5. The white Lacks reject their black heritage and family while the black Lacks accept both sides of the coin.
Chapter Seventeen: Illegal, Immoral, and Deplorable
1. The HeLa cells might infect scientists who work with them.
2. He injected HeLa cells in his patients to see what happened as a response.
3. Patients with cancer; they weren’t informed.
4. Patients developed tumors. All of tumors in the patients except four vanished; the four whose didn’t did vanish at first but returned. His hypothesis was correct.
5. Ohio prison
6. The injections could help build immunities to cancer but people with cancer couldn’t.
7. He stated that using the term cancer would strike fear and make people reluctant.
8. The doctor should tell every detail to the patient and ensure they comply willingly.
9. They knew the study was unethical and were aware of the Nuremburg Code.
10. It ensures patients provide full willing consent.
11. Determine what happens to their own body.
12. Both had their licenses suspended for an entire year.
13. Both men failed to agree for then they would lose money.
Chapter Eighteen: “Strangest Hybrid”
1. HeLa cells were send in space to see the effect of gravity on cancer.
2. Cells grow and eventually they die which follows their transformation to cancer cells. In the orbit, the cancer cells grow faster.
3. To preserve the purity of the culture cells.
4. Two distinct species are fused together to form a new hybrid species.
5. Human cells can’t be studied the same way as animal cells and by fusing them the problem is solved by combing cells with any traits.
6. More advances in the realm of genetics and the ability of mapping DNA.
7. The public wasn’t so positive in their response to hybrids as they were presented as half-humans and half-animals.
Chapter Nineteen: “The Most Critical Time on this Earth is Now”
1. She essentially was sad as she cried.
2. He was different because he was angry due to his poor treatment from Ethel.
3. He murdered Ivy.
4. They hid Joe and sent him back to Clover where he will be in harm’s way.
5. I feel Joe turned himself in in the end not only because of guilt but maybe because he felt he had nobody left in his life.
6. This reveals that though Joe was uneducated he truly tried to change and unfortunately it was too late.
7. He said he wasn’t mentally stable.
8. His time on the rock made him change his name and religion.
9. It was an abusive affair, mostly on the part of Cheetah.
10. She fails to kill him as she didn’t want to end up like Joe. She instead moves away.
Chapter Twenty: The HeLa Bomb
1. It means something unexpected is told out of the blue.
2. He found all cells to hold the rare glucose phosphate.
3. Her knew the genetic marker was rare so he tried to find races of the contaminated cell cultures. He found them through Gey and found they came from an African-American, a colored person.
4. HeLa cells are strong and hold the ability to be exposed to the environment and contaminate the remaining cell culture simultaneously.
5. Contamination leads to a money loss and researcher won’t be able to find the cell behaviors in different cultures.
6. It is the process where cell deliberately grow regardless adding transformation. Gartler suggests protecting those type of cells to find cancer cures.
7. Some were sad as all their hard work went down the drain and others began re-checking their labs in disbelief.
Chapter Twenty-One: Night Doctors
1. She believes him to be a caring and friendly man.
2. She always helped everyone in her life and even in death her living cells ironically continue to help people today.
3. The refrain references the good HeLa cells accomplish and by knowing the good these cells do, Henrietta’s family accept the research due to its potential good.
4. It suggests that Day had a plethora of problems through life including a lack of medical attention due to his mistrust in doctors. He also fears he will face the same fate as Henrietta.
5. An example would be when Day needed an amputation but wouldn’t get one because of what happened to Henrietta.
6. A bunch of experiments.
7. Night doctors were white doctors who kidnapped black children and experimented on them in the night. This led to the development of the KKK.
8. It was meant to help those who couldn’t afford medical attention.
9. It shows that researchers looked for genetic predispositions to criminal behavior and didn’t gain prior consent.
10. They can’t afford insurance because of money but Henrietta’s cells make so much and they get none of them.
11. They took the cells without informing them and made so much profit and didn’t even give them a portion of the money.
Chapter 22: “The Fame She So Richly Deserves”
1. Pancreatic Cancer
2. He wanted the doctors to take samples from his pancreas, so they’d immortalize like Henrietta’s.
3. He wished to save others like Henrietta’s cells did.
4. No, he didn’t profit from any monetary perspective.
5. Yes for he changed from careless to caring.
6. Her tumor was invasive but not epidemic carcinoma which means it could’ve been cured.
7. To give $1.5 billion to cancer research.
8. The letter that Jones wrote 20 years later came out.
9. I believe it should’ve been released for it gives her the respect she deserves as she died so millions of others could live. With this, we now read texts such as this one and can work to recognize her properly.
Chapter 23: “It’s Alive”
1. Gardenia’s brother-in-law told her about the cell research.
2. 22 years
3. To identify if the cell that was contaminated came from Henrietta’s cells.
4. No, none of this never happened.
5. They began to believe they had cancer like Henrietta.
6. There was new legislation in 1973 where doctors couldn’t take anything from people for researchers.
7. She was 30 years old which was when her mother died.
8. If they don’t they might get sued.
9. This basically reveals Hsu’s greed and heartlessness.
Chapter 24: “Least They Can Do”
1. He wants to write an article that encompasses science and human interest.
2. He found it through Walter Nelson.
3. The Lacks didn’t know about HeLa cells and asked questions regarding the blood taken by the doctors.
4. She wants to fight Johns Hopkins because they used her mother and let the family perish and didn’t share any profits.
5. To bring someone with a similarity to Henrietta.
Chapter 25: “Who told you you could sell my spleen”
1. Moore sued his doctor because he wanted to cell his leukemia cells.
2. Ted was suffering hemophilia and felt fortunate to create antibodies and needed money, so he sold them.
3. Patients wer