Compare And Contrast The Contributions Of Vivian Thomas

American surgeon Dr. Norman Shumway pioneered cardiac transplantation while working in Palo Alto. He made series of animal experiments which involves cooling the heart, and reducing the number of anastomosis by leaving the atria in situ. However it was Dr. Christian Barnard who performed the first human heart transplant in 1967 during his visit in Shumway’s unit. Following Bardnard’s transplant, there were more than a hundred cardiac transplants performed at centres all around the world, with only few patients survived to leave the hospital (Watson and Dark, 2012).

The scientific community’s careless mistreatment of the Lacks family began with dehumanizing Henrietta’s cells in the very first lab. Generalizing people can especially be easy when one is working with their cells in a lab. The many scientists working on Henrietta’s cells must have found it easy to separate the cells from the person and reduce them to tools to aid them in the task at hand. This view may be harmless when it comes to the individual scientist, and the individual cell, but this view extended to the entire Lacks family and caused them much harm. “Meanwhile, Victor McKusick and Susan Hsu had just published the results of their research in

Even though, no one knows her name or story, they know the scientific advancements because of her. My definition of the word “history” and “ethics” has expanded to incorporate all perspectives on a particular situation after glancing inward. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, "Our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class, and our nation; and this means we must develop a world perspective,” which is exactly what Henrietta Lacks has taught me to

In 1951, one woman’s misfortune became the ultimate breakthrough and lead to a huge discovery in science. Henrietta Lacks was a lower class African-American woman living in Baltimore, Maryland at the time. She had been suffering from a “knot in her womb” that caused her to experience grave pain. In the 1950’s, a time when hospitals turned away lower class African American patients away, they had access to receive free treatment from the public ward at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Although doctors there agreed to examine these patients, it is questionable how thorough and genuine they were throughout the examination. In 1950, Henrietta gave birth to her youngest daughter Deborah, and by January of 1951 she had a full-blown cancerous tumor in

Medical science has come a long way in the last 65 years. There have been many significant medical advances, including the development of the polio vaccine, the perfection of cell culturing techniques, the advent of medical commercialization, and progress towards understanding cancer and HIV. All of this -- and much, much more -- was made possible by one woman: Henrietta Lacks. She was an African American woman born in 1920, and by the time she died of cancer in 1951, she had made no direct contributions to the world of medicine. In fact, the thing that has since brought Henrietta’s name into the medical world was the very thing that ended up killing her. All of this was made possible by what doctors discovered inside of her tumor.

The book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot depicts the story of a woman named Henrietta whose cancer cells revolutionized science. Henrietta, a young black woman, grew up in the 1920s when Jim Crow laws divided the nation, making whites and blacks separate but certainly not equal. Believed to be inferior beings, blacks were not fortunate enough to have the things that white people were given such as good schools, high paying jobs and competent doctors. Black people had such poor health care and education that they believed anything a doctor said because they were lucky that they could even see a doctor. This willingness to listen to anything a doctor, or any white

Without the patient’s’ knowledge, doctors would use them for research and “many scientists believed that since patients were treated for free in the public wards, it was fair to use them as research subjects as a form of payment” (30). While Henrietta was being operated on, a doctor “picked up a sharp knife and shaved two dime-sized pieces of tissue from Henrietta's cervix: one from her tumor, and one from the healthy cervical tissue nearby. Then he placed the samples in a glass dish” (33). This sample would change the course of medical history and save thousands of lives. These doctors performed other tasks and felt no remorse for his patients. They would give no information to their patients and “repeated this process with about a dozen other cancer patients” (128). One doctor “told them he was testing their immune systems; he said nothing about injecting them with someone else's malignant cells”, and these innocent people had no idea what was being put in them (128). While the public started to question the morals of the doctors who were non-consensually performing tasks on their subjects, the doctors countered their remarks by asking "if the whole profession is doing it, how can you call it 'unprofessional conduct'?" (134). Unfortunately, there were consequences and repercussions of taking the cells of Henrietta and countless others. The Lacks

Some women wouldn’t have dreamt of standing up to gender roles while on the other hand others stood their ground in rebelling against them. For example, the medical school Johns Hopkins wasn’t quite a medical school until they accepted a deal made with the “University trustees' daughters - Martha Carey Thomas, Mary Elizabeth Garrett, Elizabeth King and Mary Gwinn” They would raise the necessary funds needed to open the medical school, if and only if, the school would open its doors to qualified women.” One of these qualified women was Carolin Bedell Thomas who developed the “first preventative treatment for a major form of heart disease by using the drug sulfanilamide to break the destructive cycle of rheumatic fever” Along with Carolin, Florence Sabin was the first woman appointed as a full professor at the school of medicine in 1917. In her speech she says “This very year, I graduated with the third best grade of the class. With only being one of the fourteen girls in my entire class of 45[…] If I am to be remembered, I want to be remembered by this one statement. "If I didn't believe that the answer could be found, I would not be working on it." Florence not only fell in love with science but followed her dream to go into medical school with all the financial struggles along the way in addition to the overwhelming prejudice of women in the workforce. This line in her speech shows her complete admiration and determination for the medical field. She makes a point of explaining her motto and inspiring others to go for anything they believe in no matter who they are because “the answer” can always be found and the struggle can be overcome. She believed in what she wanted to do and went for it no matter how many

In the 1940s, there were many babies with a condition that made their blood have below-normal levels of oxygen. Racism was also popular then. Vivien Thomas grew up in Nashville Tennessee and went to Pearl High School. He couldn’t go to college because of the the Great Depression. Thomas needed a job so he went to work for a doctor. He was Dr. Alfred Blalock. Blalock was researching shock, a condition that kills people during surgery. He saw that Thomas was extremely talented in this field. Thomas

Vivien Thomas was by most treated as an individual and with respect. For example, he was allowed to use the same restroom as all of the white lab workers and doctors. This was a mark of equality not achieved in the general society until the 1960s. However, he was not permitted to play a social role equal to that when in the lab. Also, while Vivien Thomas made major contributions to every phase of the development of the operations in the laboratory, Dr. Blalock never fully acknowledged Thomas’ work and seemed to have claimed professional recognition for Mr. Thomas' creativity and talents as his

Water has always been a great issue for Dallas, considering the fact that the population has grown exponentially since the late 1850s, growing from merely 678 people in 1860 to well over one million in population currently. Furthermore, as population grew, Dallas also spatially grew due to their power to keep acquiring more land and water resources as demand for both increased. Although Dallas no longer uses groundwater due to inefficient supply, the city did rely on groundwater in the beginning of its history. In the late 1850s, Browder Springs was privately owned by the Browder family, providing clean water to those living near, however, when it became clear that the increasing population needed an organization to effectively

“Something the Lord Made” is a historical analysis—conducted under a dramatic lense—of the innovations of Vivian Thomas and Alfred Blalock in respect to heart surgery, specifically blue baby syndrome. Although the dramatic documentary is geared towards the innovations of heart surgery at this time, there are also heavy ties to the racial divide during the period of history. Essentially, our protagonist, Vivian Thomas, who subsequently has not had the opportunity to earn a college degree, is adopted by accredited surgeon Alfred Blalock at Johns Hopkins University. While we see their research progress we also see the nature and evolution of the dynamic of their relationship where Vivian Thomas, also being incredibly intelligent, is regarded

To receive recognition, you must find a reasonable answer that can prove that the impossible can be done. Before the heart surgery, it was the rule of law that you can not touch the heart since it can ruin the flow of blood and it can cause a mortality rate. Doctor Blalock challenged this theory with his partner Vivien Thomas and his colleagues working together to break this case. With both Vivien’s and Doctor Blalock’s knowledge of the heart, they managed to cure the “Blue Baby Syndrome” to prove to the other doctors that their theory can be proven. Vivien should have been recognized also because he was the only black surgical technician that he actually contributed to the cause. However, Doctor Blalock was receiving all of the fame and popularity

In 1967, surgeon Christiaan Barnard performed the first successful human heart transplant on 54-year-old Louis Washkansky, a grocer living in South Africa. Despite Washkansky only living for 18 days post-surgery, Barnard was instantly boosted to worldwide fame and praised for his exceptional pioneering in the field of science. Prior to Barnard’s procedure, heart transplants had only been attempted on subhuman species such as frogs, dogs, cows, and chimpanzees.

Cardiology has always been known as merely the study of the functions and issues of the heart. However, cardiology is an extreme in depth topic that is overlooked by many. The journey of medicine began around 5000 years ago by Egyptians who were the first known people to record the practice of organized medicine. The practice of medicine has a lengthy and prestigious background that outlined the creation of the majority of specialties and fields in the medical world. Of these fields, cardiology seemed to have a major influence on upcoming physicians. Due to the necessity of survival that the heart possesses, cardiology gained popularity quickly from doctors to decipher the heart. As the heart has yet to be fully understood, the field of cardiology is very open to new innovative and creative minds. There is a brilliance that comes with medicine. There will never be a point in history in which medicine that advances cardiology or any other system within the body ceases to develop new and improved characteristics. Cardiovascular innovations in the surgical and medical field have vastly improved success in cardiothoracic procedures, patient recovery, and has saved the lives of countless people.