Reasons To Blame For Life's Death

What if you had the ability to save several lives through something only you had ? Wouldn’t you like to be told and given proper credit? Well unfortunately that is not case for Henrietta Lacks. Henrietta held a powerful and significant key which has helped as a cure for many things and is still being used till this day . I choose to write about Henrietta due to the fact that she is one of histories and science unsung hero’s.

The focus of my research paper is to inform readers whom Mrs. Lacks was and the injustice that happened with her and to prove she deserves recognition. In order to entirely grasp my topic one must know who Mrs.Lacks was. For this reason I’m using The Lacks Family’s official website that introduces her. This will help me introduce the topic in my research paper.

Rebecca Skloot, a science writer has always been obsessed with the name Henrietta Lacks. Henrietta Lacks was an African American women whose cancer cells were removed and used for scientific experimentation. Many doctors believed that cells were not immortal, until they found Henrietta’s. People did not know much information about Henrietta and her family, and so Skloot wants to tell her story. Throughout her research, she does not realize how much backstory, and emotional baggages exists until she contacts the family, and begins to connect with them. The family members are keen about the idea of opening up to people about Henrietta. They believe that reporters will just keep on taking advantage of them. With this, Skloot realizes that the

Christine Jessop was a nine year old girl who after bring dropped off by the school bus at her home in Queensville decided to ride her bike to the park nearby to meet with her friends. After stopping to buy some gum at the local store she was last seen walking her bike up her driveway by her friend Kim Warren. She did not keep her appointment with her friend at the park, and would never be seen alive again (Anderson & Anderson, 2009). This small town instantly became involved in the search for the missing girl, but with very little evidence to go on time passed, and hope began to diminish for the safe return home of Jessop. On New Year’s Eve 1984, eighty-nine days after Jessop went missing, her body was found badly decomposed in a bush by Fred Patterson fifty-five kilometers from Queensville. An autopsy would later revival that she was raped and mutilated (Anderson & Anderson, 2009). The police still did not have a suspect in the case nor did they have any leads, but now that her body was found the police and the small town were the topic of media, increasing pressure

People easily view themselves as the main character of their story. We experience our lives from the first person perspective, our own perspective. We are the center of every single one of our experiences. But what about everyone else? After all, we cannot be the main characters of every life story. We think very little if at all about what sort of life the barista serving us coffee has, or the daily woes that plague a fast food worker serving us burgers at a drive-through. We have a tendency to view others as functions of how they benefit us. Rebecca Skloot’s nonfiction novel The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a vivid illustration of this spirit of abstraction. The scientific community and the national media used Henrietta and her family as a commodity, exploiting them for their own benefit, forgetting that behind the cancer cells they took, lies a human being. This abuse was caused by an irresponsible sense of altruistic authority, journalistic encroachment and the phenomenon of groupthink.

In most cases, civilians have often taken modern medicine for granted, not acknowledging the fact people just like themselves developed astonishing vaccines and cures. Countless hours of researching, observing, and calculating paved the way to new breakthroughs in science. A simple question could develop into a thirst for knowledge. The desire for discovery of the unknown has led to modern day technology. In the 21st century biography, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot built a logical argument to reveal the potential of scientific studies and the impact new information had on society; thereby she argued for a need to educate the public on the possibilities of new scientific research.

This essay will ‘compare and contrast’ two approaches made in investigating the ‘bystander effect’. It will discuss in some depth as to what exactly is meant by the bystander effect, illustrating when this concept was first shown and why. An outline will be made of the different methods used, those being experiments and discourse analysis, explaining each one in turn, within the framework of two cases. The first being the murder of ‘Catherine Genovese,’ 1964.and the second ‘James Bulger’ 1993. The essay will then show examples of the differences and similarities between each method. Concluding with a summary of findings into the two approaches to investigating the Bystander Effect.

They used a hard vocabulary to contain the terrible softness. Greased they 'd say. Offed, lit up, zapped while zipping. It wasn 't cruelty, just stage presence. They were actors. When someone died, it wasn 't quite dying, because in a curious way, it seemed scripted, and because they had their lines mostly memorized, irony mixed with tragedy, and because they called it by other names, as if to encyst and destroy the reality of death itself. "

Corrie Ten Boom exemplified the characteristics of a visionary leader through her inspirational motivation in the Dutch underground resistance against Nazi Germany. Corrie witnessed the Jewish oppression at the hands of the Nazis and rejected it (Straub, 1992). One night, a Jewish woman went to Corrie and asked for help and Corrie agreed. Soon, Corrie became an active part of the Dutch underground resistance and worked to save the Jews (Ten Boom, 2006). Here, Corrie used her gift of inspirational motivation to inspire and motivate others to join the resistance or support the effort by providing food ration cards, supplies, or safe passage for the Jews and resistance workers. She even had a hidden room built in her house to hide the Jews residing there (Straub, 1992; Ten Boom, 2006).

Considering all of these accounts it is unimaginable for one to look beyond the reality of them and see the silver lining. However, just as Jurgis Rudkus failed many times throughout his story and even almost gave up on life until a woman at a socialist rally displayed a sense of admiration to be respected at a parallel level simply by addressing Jurgis as “comrade,” proves that there is hope for progressive change. Perhaps, it was the woman’s generosity that surprised Jurgis as her kind approach was not common among individuals in this era. Whatever it was, one cannot argue that constant exposure to crime, poverty, death, illness, and need for survival will eventually ignite the fire for reform and justice. According to Jane Addams, in her

Growing up, I had never heard of foster care. I did not know anyone who had been in foster care and I only knew of one person in high school who lived in a home with abusive parents. I was friends with a handful of people who had been adopted, but was ignorant to the fact that their adoption potentially impacted them on a daily basis and in every area of their life. The first time I had a real glimpse into the world of abused and neglected children was in 2005 when I was a senior in high school and took a trip with my church to Peru. I visited an orphanage and spent several days playing with the children who lived there. I did not know it at the time, but that experience sparked my journey into the field of social work. I attended Hope College, a liberal arts Christian college in Western Michigan. I knew that I wanted to go into a helping profession and declared social work as my major my Sophomore year. I chose social work over other degrees such as sociology or education because I knew that I wanted to work directly with children and families to help them change and improve their lives. I studied hard and was fortunate enough to be offered a full time internship at Casa Central in Chicago, IL. Casa Central was a private child welfare agency working primarily with Spanish-speaking clients. My world view broadened as I came

A Death of One’s Own sheds light onto the controversial issue regarding end of life decisions, providing a few examples of people struggling with these choices. The film tells the stories of three particular individuals, Jim, Kitty, and Ricky, each with a unique end of life situation. Jim suffers from ALS and has specific care requests, 56-year-old Kitty struggles with her uterine cancer and constant pain, and Ricky is a patient dying from severe liver failure who can no longer speak and make decisions on his own. All of these individuals present different, yet similar issues regarding end of their life care. This film describes the importance of advance directives, the arguments surrounding physician assisted suicide, and this prompted me to form my own opinion on preparing my own directives and thoughts on these tough decisions.

The classic definition for culture was proposed by Tylor (1871/1958) and still commonly cited: Culture is “that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, arts, morals, law, custom, and many other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society” (p. 1). This definition focuses on attributes that are acquired through growing up or living in a particular society, rather than through biological inheritance (Kottak, 2002). In Giger and Davidhizar’s (1991) Model for transcultural care, culture was defined as a patterned behavioral response that develops over time as a result of imprinting the mind through social and religious structures and intellectual and artistic manifestations.

What would you do if you were caring for a child whose condition would eventually kill them, but the parents wanted you to try every treatment? In the article “When Living Is a Fate Worse Than Death” by Christine Mitchell, the main point consists of this very question. The choice that hospital staff sometimes must make between keeping a child alive knowing that their condition will eventually take over or trying every procedure in an attempt to keep them alive. I believe that Mitchell does a great job in stating her claim favoring the side that a child with an illness that would, in time, take their life should be allowed to die peacefully rather than enduring painful procedures and bouncing between home and hospitals.

Even though phoning the police would have possessed much ease, not one of the many witnesses took the stand to do so. Heartless excuses uttered out of the mouths of those who pretended as if nothing had happened. Police looked on with disappointment. Had society taken charge and helped out a woman crying out, her life would have been spared. This predicament represents how society should not make selfish decisions and should just help others out. In the case of Catherine Genovese, she lost her life, but if faced with similar scenarios, society should be proactive and join together to save the lives of