The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot 1- Who was Henrietta Lack
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Question
The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
1- Who was Henrietta Lacks ? What is her contribution to science and medecine ? Explain the contribution that HeLWHATa cells made to the emerging field of genetics?
2-What are Hela cells? What unusual characteristics of Hela cells made them ideal for some in the polio vaccine trials? Why did Tuskegee Institute become involved in the means production of Hela cells?Describe the depth of the Institute's involvement .Explain the inherent irony of the fact that the Tuskegee Hela production lab was operating at the same time that the infamous syphilis study was being conducted ? What does the juxtaposition of these two projects reveal about race relations in the early 1950s?
3- Which character in the book was eugenicists? Why did he win the Nobel Prize? What controversial beliefs did he have and what are your thoughts and opinions about his controversial thoughts? What movement were his beliefs aligned to and what are your thoughts and opinions about this movement?
4-Henrietta Lack's pony sized tumor would bleed to the touch. Why was this case?How did her doctors react to Henrietta's initiative conviction that cancer was spreading inside of her?
5-What was Chester Southam concerned that Hela cells might do?Describe the experiment that Southam developed to test his hypothesis about Hela.Who were the test subjects in Southam's first study? Were they informed about the research and its risks? What was the result of the Southam's first research study? Based on the results, did his hypothesis appear to be correct? Did Southam correctly apply the scientific method in his work? What is the scientific method?Where did Southam find test subjects for his second research study?Based on the results of the second study, what two things did Southam believe that injections of Hela cells might be able to do?How did Southam justify his decision to inject Hela cells into patients without their knowledge or consent?
Explanation / Answer
1.Henritta Lacks was an African - American woman, born on August 1, 1920 in Virginia. She was diagonised by extremely aggressive strain of Cervican cancer. Unlike other cancer cells HeLa cells are immortal. The cells from the tumour is removed and grown in laboratries for understanding and finding a cure for cancer. Henritta's major contribution to genitics is human cloning. They also detected the exact number of human chromosomes (46) number by accidental staining of HeLa cells. With this discovery scientists were able to find the chromosomal abbretions and other chromosomal related disorders like Down's syndrome.
2. HeLa cells are cancer cells ,like normal cells they express, regulate and divide. HeLa cells when infected produces bacterial hormones and allows to study.Hela was malignant already so it was useful in reproducing viruses rather than viruses reprogramming the cell. Hela cells grew faster than normal cells, so results came faster. Growing HeLa cells is also easy and it can grow even on the floating culture medium. Gey and William Scherer found out that Hela cells were more susceptible to poliovirus than any cultured cell was. Because Hela cells are inexpensive, grow on a mass scale, easy to study, and very susceptible to poliovirus. Hela cells were the ideal cells to use in the polio vaccine.
The Tuskegee Institute became involved in the mass production of Hela because the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis(NFIP) chose Charles Bynum the director of "Negro Actives".A Tuskegee team created a factory which would be the first ever cell production factory . The Tuskegee Institute was the supplier for the Hela cell that could be studied by scientists for quick results. Without the Tuskegee Institute there would be no mass production of Hela cells
3. Henritta's cells divide so aggressively and so her tumour remained shiny and purple and bled easily when touched. HeLa cells has the tendency to contaminante other human cells which is a unique property of HeLa cells.
5. Southam a Viriologist , decided to inject a saline solution along with millions of HeLa cells into about cancer patients . He wanted to see how the patients' bodies reacted to HeLa's rapidly growing characteristics. Southam did this without alerting the patients that he was actually injecting them with more cancer. He noticed that small nodules would grow at the site of injection. He removed them, but in some patients, the nodules came back and grew rapidly. Two weeks after the injection, some of the nodules had grown to two centimeters. In one patient, the cancer metastasized, obviously putting her life at risk. After determining how people who had already had cancer reacted to cancerous HeLa cells, Southam decided to test them out out healthy prison subjects. Just as with the cancer patients, the healthy prison subjects grew tumors near the site of injection. One difference, however, was that the healthy prison subjects fought the cancer off. Also, after each new injection, their bodies responded faster. The significance of his studies meant that people whose immune systems were weak would be affected, while those who had strong immune systems were affected, but were able to fight it off and grow stronger as a result.
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