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diff --git a/markley/blog/05_hela_genre b/markley/blog/05_hela_genre new file mode 100644 index 0000000..988eca4 --- /dev/null +++ b/markley/blog/05_hela_genre @@ -0,0 +1,63 @@ +Reading journal post about the different genres in which the story is + told, using your free write from Exercise I in the lecture on The + Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. You can discuss the book, the Nature + article, the timeline, or the movie. You do not have to include all + the genres but try to discuss at least two. Make sure to include + images. + +# HeLa and Henrietta + +Henrietta Lacks lived from 1920 to 1951, but her cells are still around. +Rebecca Skloot's *The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks* is a personal +and scientific history, keeping the focus away from a direct moral +argument. +In her telling of the personal effect on the Lacks and of Henrietta's +life, she treats the family's stories very centrally. +Skloot narrates the Lacks family's concerns and beliefs about the case +in terms of her interviews with them. +She characterizes the family as wronged and still bitter, largely +because they've been kept in the dark about what Henrietta's cells were +doing, how they had been taken (including the mere fact that they had +been taken), or even what the cells were. +She also includes a narrative about the breakthroughs that HeLa has +helped with---developing this dilemma between the wrongs perpetrated +against the Lacks with the wider benefits. +The merging of the the personal and impersonal medical narratives lets +the dichotomy exist without being exactly resolved. +It also plays to much of the honoring of Henrietta's memory---as her +children and Skloot want to do, memorializing Lacks's life and death. + +[IMAGE: Timeline of HeLa's story from Henrietta's birth in 1920 to 2013. +CAPTION: A medical---and thus much less personal---timeline of HeLa's +life. Released under CC BY-2.0 by National Human Genome Research +Institute (NHGRI). SRC: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/ +File:Henrietta_Lacks_(HeLa)_Timeline_(26453304954).jpg] + +This timeline, on the other hand, is not a memorial to Henrietta's life. +It informs the viewer of Henrietta's life's milestones and the fact that +she didn't give consent to have her cells taken, but it doesn't focus on +that fact. +The timeline is a medical history reference, so unlike the book or [this +Nature article](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02494-z), it +does not focus on the morality of the situation or points of view from +Henrietta's family. +Instead, it focuses on the scientific results, especially in the blurb +above the chronological timeline. +This shows a bias towards researchers and those achievements, so the +authors more probably believe that the value derived from her cells +should be celebrated. + +[IMAGE: Logarithmic graph of the exponentially decreasing cost of genome +sequencing. CAPTION: It is becoming exceedingly cheap to fully sequence +a genome, so a group of researchers decided to sequence HeLa's +(Henrietta Lacks's) genome, receiving backlash from her family and the +broader public. SRC: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/ +File:Cost_per_Genome.png] + +The Nature article proposes that the practice of taking cells without +consent (or doing other things) should be banned. +It structures the argument around Henrietta's personal story, using her +innate rights to argue that patients like her (and by extension their +families) deserve to have control over their cells. +Its focus is on the opposite spectrum from the timeline, dampening the +scientific achievements to highlight the ethical argument instead. |