2012 Rules of Engagement

Responses to questions on this website are designed to generate "virtual dialogue." By virtual we do not mean something that looks like conversation but isn't. Instead, we mean REAL conversation in a virtual environment--the blog.

Dr. Steve Benton

The sort of conversation we're looking for is academic in character. Thus, your responses should be clear, concise statements of your ideas crafted in standard English (not text-speak--some of us are old!). They should be long enough to convey your thoughts, but short enough for other readers to read and respond to fairly quickly. In short, you don't want your responses to be so long that you monopolize (or kill) the conversation by going on, and on, and on.....(we all know how irritating that can be!).

Obviously, responses should not use profanity. They should be civil and respectful. People do not always agree. Responses can be critical; however, all communication is expected to be courteous and professional. Contributor's positions may be questioned; their character should not.

When should I begin posting my responses?
As soon as you have read the opening pages of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. After you've read later chapters, you can read the questions associated with them (don't respond to a question about chapter twenty-five until you have read chapters one through twenty-five).

How many questions should I respond to?

We do not expect you to respond to each question, but you should respond to several representing different sections of the book.  

How much should I write?

Your responses should add up to a sum total of not less than 750 words.  Don't try to load up all 750 words into one or two comments.  You should also respond to comments left by other readers. And pose questions to other readers. (Check back later to see if anyone has responded to your comments-and respond to their responses.)  All of this writing will count toward your word total.

Where do I post my responses?
At the bottom of each question post, you will find a "comment" link. If it has a "0" beside it, that means no one has commented yet; as more people comment, the number will go up. (Click here to see a list of all the chapters that have questions associated with them.) When you're ready to weigh in, click on the "comments" button, read any previous comments, and start writing. Please sign your posts. And use your real name--not a nickname--so we can get to know each other).

How will this affect my grade in Enduring Questions: Perspectives from Western Humanities?

Your grade on this assignment will represent approximately 1/8th of your writing grade for the course.

More questions?
E-mail us at sbenton@ecok.edu!

Engaging The Immortal Life

Welcome to your first assignment for Enduring Questions, Fall 2012.  In this post, you will find links to about 30 question sets about Rebecca Skloot's 2010 work of non-fiction, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.

After you've read the passages listed below, click on the links, read the corresponding questions and comments other readers may have left (click on the "comment" button beneath each post to see them), and then join the discussion (or initiate it).

Immortal Life:  A Few Words
Immortal Life:  Epigraph
Immortal Life:  Prologue
Immortal Life:  Deborah's Voice
Ch. 2:  Clover ... 1920-1942
Ch. 3, #1: Diagnosis and Treatment ... 1951
Ch. 3, #2: Diagnosis and Treatment ... 1951
Ch. 4: The Birth of HeLa ... 1951
Ch. 5: "Blackness be Spreadin' All Inside" ... 1951
Ch. 6: "Lady's on the Phone" ... 1999
Ch. 7: The Death and Life of Cell Culture ... 1951
Ch. 8: A Miserable Specimen ... 1951
Ch. 14: Helen Lane ... 1951
Ch. 15: "Too Young to Remember" ... 1951-1965
Ch. 16, #1: "Spending Eternity in the Same Place" ... 1999
Ch. 16, #2:  "Spending Eternity in the Same Place" ... 1999
Ch. 16, #3: "Spending Eternity in the Same Place" ... 1999
Ch. 17: Illegal, Immoral, and Deplorable ... 1954-1966
Ch. 25: "Who Told You You Can Sell My Spleen?" ...1976-1988
Ch. 26: "Breach of Privacy" ...1980-1985
Ch. 27: The Secret of Immortality ... 1984-1995
Ch. 28: After London ... 1996-1999
Ch. 31: HeLa, Goddes of Death ... 2000-2001
Ch. 32: All That's My Mother ... 2001
Ch. 33, #1:  The Hospital for Negro Insane ... 2001
Ch. 33, #2: The Hospital for Negro Insane ... 2001
Ch. 34:  The Medical Records ... 2001
Ch. 36: Heavenly Bodies ... 2001
Immortality:  Afterword, #1
Immortality:  Afterword, #2

(Stay tuned:  more links and questions are coming soon!)

Immortal Life: A Few Words

Johns Hopkins Hospital, Founded in 1889

In the opening passage of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, titled “A Few Words About This Book,” author Rebecca Skloot reports that “In many places I’ve adopted the words interviewees used to describe their worlds and experiences. In doing so, I’ve used the language of their times and backgrounds, including words such as colored. Members of the Lacks family often referred to Johns Hopkins as “John Hopkin,” and I’ve kept their usage when they’re speaking” (xiii-xiv). Skloot goes on to report that one of Henrietta’s relatives told her “If you pretty up how people spoke and change the things they said, that’s dishonest” (page xiii). Why do you think Skloot chose to place these words at the beginning of her text? Why might she have thought them necessary? If the book is non-fiction (as Skloot states in the first line of the book), wouldn’t she expect readers to believe that the author would adopt “the words interviewees used to describe their world and experiences”? Isn’t that why writers use quotation marks? Do you think some readers are likely to be skeptical of the viewpoints of offered by characters who use dialects that are not generally considered “high prestige”? Is that a legitimate reason to paraphrase them instead of quoting them?

Pretty or Not Pretty?: African American English

In this short (3-minute) video, Linguistics Professor Mary Zeigler of Georgia State University and some of her students discuss African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) and the way many people unfairly dismiss its legitimacy.  They argue that AAVE is in no way linguistically inferior to the kind of "Standard American English" often taught in schools.

After watching the video, consider some of the reasons why Skloot might have thought it necessary to explain her decision to adopt the “the words interviewees used to describe their world and experiences.”

Immortal Life: Epigraph

“Crowded Bunks in the Prison Camp at Buchenwald” (May 6, 1945)
New York Times.
Wiesel has identified himself as the face in the upper right hand corner.

The book’s epigraph by Elie Wiesel claims that “We must not see any person as an abstraction. Instead, we must see in every person a universe with its own secrets, with its own treasures, with its own sources of anguish, and with some measure of triumph.” Wiesel’s strong feelings on treating human beings as abstraction are understandable given that he is a former prisoner of Auschwitz and a Holocaust survivor.

On the other hand, much intellectual analysis of human experience relies to some extent on detecting patterns in human behavior that depends on seeing unique individuals as representatives of larger abstractions (“women,” “Oklahomans,” “smokers,” etc.). Under what circumstances is it dangerous to see people as abstractions and under what circumstances is it helpful? (Consider: if Henrietta Lacks’s cells were entirely unique and did not resemble other people’s cells in any way, what use would they be to researchers?)

Labels and the Limits of Language

In the following 11-minute video, Elie Wiesel talks about the danger of labels, the limits of language, and his experience of the Holocaust.
After watching the video, reflect on the ways that language empowers thought (how does the word "the Holocaust" shape our understanding of World War II. for example?) and the way that it creates distance between people (by referring to them as abstractions).

Immortal Life: Prologue

Cell Reproduction Cycle

In the Prologue to The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, author Skloot reveals that she “failed her freshman year at regular public high school because she never showed up.” Not long after, however, in a classroom with students openly antagonistic to the learning process (“Do we have to memorize everything on those diagrams?”), she found herself fascinated by her teacher’s discussion of “the schematics of the cell reproduction cycle” (2). Skloot has gone on on to enjoy great success as a writer.

Looking at Skloot, briefly, as an abstraction—the talented, underperforming teenager—we can use her story to reflect on the reason bright, talented students sometimes struggle in school. Have you known any students like this? Do you see any kind of patterns in their behavior that might offer insight into the reasons some bright students succeed in school while others fail? Do you see any patterns that might offer insight into what it takes to help the strugglers turn things around?

Fascinated and Proud of It?

The following 3-minute video depicts and explains the cell cycle:
 Does the information conveyed in this video interest you? Have you ever been in a situation in which you took an intellectual interest in a subject that most of your peers found boring? Do you think some students conceal their intellectual interests because their peers might look down on them for caring too much about schoolwork? Have you ever felt intellectually frustrated or held back by the attitudes or your classmates? Friends? Teachers?

Immortal Life: Deborah's Voice

Jesus Heals Lepers
(Monreale Cathedral, Sicily, Italy; 12th Century)

In an italicized passage titled “Deborah’s Voice,” Skloot records Henrietta Lacks’s daughter wondering: “if our mother cells done so much for medicine, how come her family can’t afford to see no doctor?” The implicit suggestion in her question is that Henrietta Lacks’s children (and their children) deserve medical care because of the contribution their mother made to the medical world. Others might claim that pure luck (the uniqueness of Henrietta’s cells had nothing to do with her talents or her labor) should not determine who does and does not basic deserve medical care.

How do you think medical care should be apportioned? Should it only be provided on the basis of an individual’s ability to pay for it? Or should some basic degree of medical care be provided for all on the basis of their need for it? What role should merit play in determining someone’s access to health care?

Click here to listen to an Oxford-style debate on the 2008 question of whether universal health care should be the government's responsibility.

Ch. 2 Clover ... 1920-1942

Elizabeth Eckford attempting to enter Little Rock School (Sep. 4, 1957)
(Photo by Will Count, Arkansas Gazette

Skloot writes that when Henrietta was in elementary school, “white children threw rocks and taunted her.” Just one paragraph later, Skloot talks about how she and her cousins “threw rocks to scare away the poisonous cottonmouth snakes” that were in the creek they swam in.

What similarities (and differences) do you see between the actions of the white children with respect to Henrietta and the actions of Henrietta and her cousins with respect to the snakes? Consider their motives and their perceptions.

The following video from Marquette University features documentary footage of Elizabeth Eckford and other members of the Little Rock Nine who challenged school segregation in Arkansas in September, 1957.

 In this next video, David Margolick describes his book, Elizabeth and Hazel: Two Women of Little Rock (Yale UP, 2011), which is about Elizabeth Eckford (seen in the photo at right) and Hazel Bryan, who is standing behind Elizabeth, yelling at her.

Click here to read an adapted excerpt from Margolick's book.  Click here to listen to a 7-minute interview with the author.

Ch. 3, #1: Diagnosis and Treatment ... 1951

Richard W. TeLinde

Skloot reports that when cervical cancer expert Richard Wesley TeLinde argued that “women with carcinoma in situ needed aggressive treatment, so their cancer didn’t become invasive,” an audience of pathologists “heckled him off the stage.” TeLinde’s theory, later confirmed, “could have saved the lives of millions of women. But few in the field believed him.”

Disagreements are understandable. New theories and concepts need to be probed and proved. But what explains the animosity of an audience of experts toward one of their own? Does this anecdote reveal anything about science and scientists?

In the video below, Thomas Kuhn's landmark theory of scientific progress, described in his 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, is explained via metaphor.  As you watch it, consider how admirers of the first vase might feel when the second vase is put on the table.

Ch. 3, #2: Diagnosis and Treatment ... 1951

The following question comes from the Reading Group Guide section at the back of the book:
“Henrietta signed a consent form that 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: ________________’ (page 31).

Based on this statement, do you believe TeLinde and Gey had the right to obtain a sample from her cervix to use in their research? What information would they have had to give her for Henrietta to give informed consent? Do you think Henrietta would have given explicit consent to have a tissue sample used in medical research if she had been given all the information?” (380).

Ch. 4: The Birth of HeLa ... 1951

Skloot tells us that in 1951, one wall of George Guy’s lab was lined with “cages full of squealing rabbits, rats and guinea pigs; on one side of the table where Mary sat eating her lunch, he’d built shelves holding cages full of mice, their bodies filled with tumors. Mary [Gey’s twenty-one-year-old assistant] always stared at them while she ate . . .” (34-35).

Do you think it strange that Mary chose to look at the tumor-filled mice while she was having lunch? Do you think it strange that she had her lunch in a room full of caged animals squealing—presumably—in pain? Do you think any laws should limit the way animals should be used in research experiments? How should such a law differentiate between different kinds of animals involved, the different levels of discomfort they endure (and the ability to avoid or mitigate it), the different levels of potential benefit from the research? Why do you think such laws have grown more common over the years?

Ch. 5 Blackness be spreadin' all inside . . . 1951

Dr. David Albritton drawing blood from an unidentified subject
 ("Tuskegee Syphilis Study," National Archives, Atlanta Georgia, 1932)

Skloot’s knowledge of the Tuskegee syphilis study and the “so-called Mississippi Appendectomies,” and the “lack of funding for research into sickle-cell anemia, a disease that affected blacks almost exclusively” help her persuade Roland Pattillo to put her in contact with the Lacks family.

Was the Tuskegee syphilis study discussed in any of your high school classes?  Do you think it should have been?  Do you think these stories illustrate how profound and persistent the inhumane treatment of blacks in the United States has been or are they sad exceptions to a general record of progress in this regard from the slavery era to the present?

The video below, discussing the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, features an interview with Dr. Susan Reverby, a professor of women’s and gender studies at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, who wrote Examining Tuskegee: The Infamous Syphilis Study and its Legacy. The video is taken from an October 2010 report produced by Democracy Now that includes several excerpts from a 1993 PBS/WGBH NOVA documentary on the Tuskegee experiment, titled "The Deadly Deception."
 
The segment above is taken from a longer Democracy Now program about documents unearthed by Reverby  that "show around 700 Guatemalan soldiers, prisoners, prostitutes and mental patients were infected as part of a study into the effects of penicillin."  In October 2010, the U.S. government apologized for this action.

Ch. 6: Lady's on the phone ... 1999

Sal (Danny Aiello) and Buggin' Out (Giancarlo Esposito) in Do the Right Thing (1989)

Skloot reports that the Lacks family was deeply suspicious of white people who contacted them wanting to learn more about Henrietta.

Do you think it was fair for them to feel that prejudice? Do you think that suspicions of whites that many minorities feel is no more justified or dangerous than the prejudice many whites have against various minorities? Have you encountered either kind of prejudice?

Many people believe that there is an important difference between racism and prejudice.  They argue that individuals may have prejudices against one group or another, but racism is more dangerous because it is institutional. As some put it, "racism equals prejudice plus power."  According to this logic, the prejudicial attitudes of the dominant social group are more more dangerous (and rise to the level of "racism" when they are acted on) than the prejudices felt by members of a disempowered minority.  Does that analysis make sense to you?  Do you agree with it?  Do you think it is important to differentiate between the prejudices felt by disempowered groups and the prejudices felt by people who have more power to act on their prejudices?

Movie Recommendation:  If this topic interests you, you may want to rent the film Do the Right Thing (1989), directed by Spike Lee.

Ch. 7: The Death and Life of Cell Culture ... 1951

Dr. Alexis Carrel (Sept. 16, 1935)

Skloot describes French surgeon Alexis Carrel as a brilliant scientist and a virulent racist and a fan of Hitler, “who believed the white race was being polluted by less intelligent and inferior stock” who dreamed of submitting the poor , the uneducated, and all non-whites to “death or forced sterilization” (59).

What does the chasm between Carrel’s intellectual prowess and his racist attitudes suggest about the relationship between education and virtue? Would you describe Carrel’s racism as an intellectual (a failure to understand the nature of racial difference?) or moral in nature (a hatred of different cultures?) or something different?

Can education cure racist attitudes or is something else needed?

Click here to hear author David Friedman talk about his 2007 book The Immortalists:  Charles Lindbergh, Dr. Alexis Carrel, and Their Daring Quest to Live Forever, which discusses, as the New York Times puts it, how "scientific brilliance and moral idiocy can thrive side by side" (August 28, 2007).

Ch. 8: A Miserable Specimen ... 1951

Skloot reports that in 1951 “’benevolent deception’ was a common practice—doctors often withheld even the most fundamental information from their patients, sometimes not giving them any diagnosis at all.  They believed it was best not to confuse or upset patients with frightening terms they might not understand, like cancer. Doctors knew best, and most patients didn’t question that” (63).

Under what circumstances, if any, do you think “benevolent deception” is appropriate?  Under what circumstances, if any, can skepticism of experts be a dangerous thing?

 The video ad below is a 1949 television advertisement featuring a smoking doctor.

Ch. 14: Helen Lane ... 1953-1954

George Gey

Skloot suggests that Gey may have created the pseudonym “Helen Lane” in order “to throw journalists off the trail of Henrietta’s real identity” (109). Would you characterize this as a benevolent lie?

Given the heartache experienced by the Lacks family after they learned of the contribution Henrietta’s cells made to science, do you think the Lackses would have been better off never knowing the truth?

Ch. 15: “Too Young to Remember” … 1951-1965

Elsa Lowenthal and her first cousin (and husband), Albert Einstein

Skloot reports that Deborah Lacks’s cousins attempted to rape her on multiple occasions and that sex between cousins was common in her family.

To what extent can it be said that her cousins were merely replicating a social practice that was the norm in their family and were, therefore, not entirely guilty of any crime?  Is there a universal moral injunction against rape?  Is there one against sex between cousins?  Are these moral laws that may be used to judge all human beings in all time periods?  What other moral laws fit into that category?  Can you think of any challenging test cases for such laws?

Do you think the following scene from the 1964James Bond film Goldfinger suggests anything troubling about the dynamics of forced sexual contact?

Ch. 16, #1: “Spending Eternity in the Same Place” … 1999

Skloot says “race was ever present” in Clovis and, as an example, she points out how a person’s race is commonly included out when someone is  being described, such that “Roland” is “the nice colored fellow” and “Bobcat’ is “the white man.”

Do you agree with Skloot that including a race label when you are describing someone is an example of ways that race consciousness (and, presumably, racism) is perpetuated?  How frequently do you come across this kind of linguistic behavior?  How often do you ever hear someone described as a “white guy” or a “black lady,” for example?  Do you consider it to be problematic?  Why is race even mentioned when describing someone other people don’t know?

Ch. 16, #2: "Spending Eternity in the Same Place" ... 1999

Skloot reports that the Ku Klux Klan was active in Clovis into the 1980s.  Are you aware of any activity by the Ku Klux Klan in the area you are from?  What kind of young person might respond to Ku Klux Klan recruitment today?

Ch. 16, #3: "Spending Eternity in the Same Place" ... 1999

I Passed for White, directed by Fred M. Wilcox  (1960)

Skloot describes Lillian as a woman who “converted to Puerto Rican” in an effort to “disown” her blackness.

What’s the difference between hiding your “true identity” and “choosing” an identity for yourself?  Why do you think someone might choose to “hide” their blackness? Consider the people you’ve grown up around: what other aspects of someone’s identity might they want to hide?

Movie Recommendation:  The Human Stain (2003), directed by Robert Benton:

Ch. 17: Illegal, Immoral and Deplorable ... 1954-1966

Do you think prison inmates ought not to be allowed to volunteer for dangerous clinical studies because, as Skloot writes, they are a “vulnerable population unable to give informed consent” (129)?

Does it matter what kind of crime they’ve committed?  Should there be any limits to what kind of experiments non-prison inmates can volunteer for?

Do you think there’s anything wrong with paying poor people to participate in dangerous medical experiments that might benefit society?  How “dangerous” is too dangerous? The video below discusses prisoners at Holmesburg Prison in Philadelphia  who were used as medical guinea pigs between the 1951 and the 1974. Allen Hornblum, author of the 2007 book, Sentenced to Science, and Yusef Anthony, a former prison test subject, recount this hidden history.

Ch. 18: "Strangest Hybrid" ... 1960-1966

"Newborn" (2010) by Patricia Piccinini

When the press publishes editorials warning of “artificially induced mouse men” or runs cartoons of a “hippopotamus woman” do you think the press is guilty of dangerously sensationalizing the facts and, thereby, endangering the prospects of serious research efforts?  Or are they usefully stirring the interest of the public in the dangerous of genetic experimentation? The video below explores the work of Patricia Piccinini, which explores the slippery slope between curiosity and disgust in hybridity experiments.

Ch. 25: "Who Told You You Could Sell my Spleen?" ...1976-1988

California Supreme Court Justice Edward Panelli wrote the majority decision
in the Moore v. Regents of the University of California decision

Skloot reports that today “When tissues are removed from your body, with or without your consent, any claim you might have had to owning them vanishes” (205).

Do you agree with the California Supreme Court’s ruling on this issue?

Click here to read a 2006 New York Times article by Rebecca Skloot which discusses this landmark decision.

Ch. 26: "Breach of Privacy" ... 1980-1985

Moses with the Ten Commandments (1648)
by Philippe de Champaigne

As Skloot explains, laws about standard medical practice have changed over the years:  “Today, publishing medical records without permission could violate federal law. But in the early eighties, when someone gave Henrietta’s medical records to Gold, there was no such law” (211).

Obviously, views on right and wrong have changed over the years.  Do you think what is right and wrong changes or just human notions of what is right and wrong?  If wrong has always been wrong, shouldn't we be able to make moral judgments about the past using the same criteria that make sense to us today?

In the early eighties, it was not illegal to publish medical records without the permission of the patient, but was it morally wrong nevertheless?  Do you think everything that is morally wrong ought to be illegal as well?

Ch. 27: The Secret of Immortality ... 1984-1995

Status of Genghis Khan in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia

Henrietta’s sister Gladys believed that Skloot’s cancer cells grew so powerfully because she left their father behind for Gladys to care for as he aged:  “The way Gladys saw it, that cancer was the Lord’s way of punishing Henrietta for leaving home” (213).  Whether or not you agree with Gladys’s views on the morality of the decisions Henrietta made, do you believe that in this life (leaving aside your views of what happens after people die) immoral behavior is punished in some way?  Put another way, do you think people who behave immorally (however you define moral behavior) have same chances to be happy in this life as people who avoid such behavior?

In the photo at right is a monument to Genghis Khan (11-62-1227) in Sukhbaatar Square in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.  Khan reigned over the largest contiguous land empire in human history and allegedly claimed that "Man's greatest good fortune is to chase and defeat his enemy, seize his total possessions, leave his married women weeping and wailing, ride his gelding, and use the bodies of his women as a nightshirt . . ."  Today, many would consider Genghis Khan to have behaved immorally in his life, yet he was extremely powerful.

Movie Recommendation:  Crimes and Misdemeanors (1991) directed by Woody Allen.

Ch. 28: After London ... 1996-1999

NAACP President (1996-2004) Kweisi Mfume, of Turner Station

The Turner Station Heritage Committee sought to “bring attention to black people from Turner Station who’d contributed good things to the world:  a former congressman who became president of the NAACP, an astronaut, and the man who’d won several Emmy awards as the voice of Sesame Street’s Elmo."

Do you know of any people from East Central University who have contributed good things to the world?  If there were an East Central University Heritage Committee, whom do you think they should include in their initial list of honorees?

Click here to read a New York Times review of the work of artist Leon Polk Smith, an ECU grad.  Click here to see some of Smith's work.

Ch. 31: HeLa, Goddess of Death ... 2000-2001

Sonny Lacks and Rebecca Skloot at the University of Delaware

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks has been a huge commercial success for Rebecca Skloot.  In addition to her earnings from sales of the book, she also charges $10,000 per public speaking engagement.  It seems fair to say that Henrietta Lacks’s story has made Skloot rich.

Do you see any similarity between the way she has benefitted from the Lackses and the way others have benefitted economically from Henrietta Lacks’s cells?  Skloot tells Deborah that she is willing to create a college scholarship fund for Deborah’s children, but she “couldn’t pay for her story” (251).  Although she doesn’t give her reasons why, we can assume that one of the reasons might be that doing so would violate her professional code of ethics as a journalist.  Do you think Skloot should feel at all troubled by the fact that she used the struggles of the Lacks family to attain great personal success for herself (even if that her primary motive was not selfish)?  What, if anything, does she owe the Lacks family now that the book has been published?

Ch. 32: "All That's My Mother" ... 2001

Jed Clampett shoots at food, discovers oil

Christopher Lengauer argues that valuable human cells are like oil found on someone’s property.  People who are lucky enough to discover oil on their property are like lottery winners who become wealthy without having to work for it.

Some say that those who are born to parents who are wealthy are lucky in the same way; they inherit wealth without having to work for it.  Do you think in a just society people should have to work for any riches they enjoy or is that kind of justice unimportant?

Ch. 33, #1: The Hospital for Negro Insane ... 2001

Pneumoencephalography scene in The Exorcist (1973)

Skloot describes pneumoencephalography as a torturous, life-threatening procedure which was “abandoned” in the 1970s (276).

Do you think “pneumoencephalography” should be illegal?  Should all torturous, life-threatening medical procedures be abandoned? Do you think it requires an admirable kind of courage or mental toughness on the part of doctors who submit patients to such torture in order to advance scientific knowledge or is it mere callousness and indifference to the suffering of others?

Ch. 33, #2: The Hospital for Negro Insane ... 2001

"The Farmer" (1853), depicting George Washington and His Slaves

Skloot reports Deborah saying “Like I’m always telling my brothers, if you gonna go into history, you can’t do it with a hate attitude. You got to remember, times was different?”  As a rule, do you think people unfairly judge the actions of historical persons without taking account of the fact that “times were different”?  Or do you think that people too often overlook past crimes and forget past wrongs out of laziness, patriotic sentiment, guilt, squeamishness or other less than noble (and often subconscious) motives? The video below describes the renovated slave quarters at George Washington's Mount Vernon estate.

Ch. 34: The Medical Records ... 2001

Deborah Lacks and Rebecca Skloot

In the chapter titled “The Medical Records,” Skloot describes how Deborah slammed her against the wall because Deborah suspected that she was being lied to.  Skloot does not report that Deborah ever apologized for the violent behavior she displayed on this occasion or for the erratic behavior she demonstrated on other occasions, nor does she suggest that Deborah ever thought her own behavior was in any way inappropriate.  Does Skloot’s depiction of Deborah’s mental and emotional state strike you as fair?  Do you think she errs on the side of generosity toward Deborah, making a special effort to encourage sympathy with the way Deborah has been mistreated by the system?  Do you find her patience with Deborah and her tolerance of her instability are unrealistically depicted? Do you think Skloot makes herself out to appear heroically patient and generous?  Do you think Skloot put up with as much as she did and pretended to be Deborah’s friend in order to get the story?

Ch. 36: Heavenly Bodies ... 2001

William of Ockham (c.1287-1347)

Ockham’s Razor is a logical principle employed by many scientists that holds that “other things being equal, a simpler explanation is better than a more complex one.”  Skloot reports that for Deborah Lacks and her family the embraced the idea that “God chose Henrietta as an angel who would be reborn as immoral cells” more readily than they did the explanation “offered by science: that the immortality of Henrietta’s cells had something to do with her telomeres and how HPV interacted with her DNA” (296).

Leaving aside for the moment your religious beliefs, do you think people tend to overcomplicate things when the simplest answer is right in front of them?  Or do you think people gravitate toward the simplest answer because they are impatient with details and reluctant to challenge their preconceived notions?

Immortality: Afterword, #1

David Korn

In the book’s Afterword, Skloot quotes David Korn, vice provost for research at Harvard University, as saying that “people are morally obligated to allow their bits and pieces to be used to advance knowledge to help others. Since everybody benefits, everybody can accept the small risks of having their tissue scraps used in research” (321).  Do you agree with Korn that while “consent feels nice,” the moral obligation to advance knowledge to help others is more important?

Lori B. Andrews

Or do you agree with Lori Andrews, who counters that “Science is not the highest value in society” and that it is more important to respect the rights of an individual to determine for themselves how their “bits and pieces” may be used—both when they are living and dead?

Immortality: Afterword, #2

Illustration by Alex Nabaum

Skloot reports that “It’s illegal to sell human organs and tissues for transplants or medical treatments, but it’s perfectly legal to give them away while charging fees for collecting and processing them” (322).  Does that strike you as unfair?

Should people be free to sell their own organs and tissues for transplants or medical treatments if they want to?  Does the prohibition against organ-selling strike you as similar in any way to the prohibition against prostitution? The video below features an Oxford-style debate about whether or not we should legalize the market for human organs.
 
Click here for more research and information about the debate, hosted by Intelligence Squared.

 Movie recommendation: Dirty Pretty Things (2002) directed by Stephen Frears.