'Tis the season, and there's nothing like some gay Christmas to make the season bright. Our Christmas tree is up, and is eating Her living room. We went to Ingebretsen's on Lake Street today, to get some final ornaments.
Amid presents and hoping for snow (and then hoping not to have to drive in snow) and going about my business with working retail during the holidays, it's been very up-and-about.
I'm about to go and get the handbook for the Nursing pre-entrance exam, so I'm a giant ball of stress.
Wish me luck! I'll write more later. :D
-Femme
Monday, December 19, 2011
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Do Do That VooDoo That You Do So Well...
In The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot did extensive research to include Henrietta's family members' perspectives in the book. One of the most interesting things about Henrietta's family is that each person has a slightly different opinion about the origins of Henrietta's cancer. In her research for the book, Skloot first ventured into Clover, Virginia, in December of 1999 (77). On this trip she met up with one of Henrietta's cousins, named Cootie, and it was his thoughts on the cause of Henrietta's cancer that really grabbed me:
"'You know, a lot of things, they man-made,' he told me, dropping his voice to a whisper. 'You know what I mean by man-made, don't you?'
I shook my head no.
'Voodoo,' he whispered. 'Some peoples is sayin Henrietta's sickness and them cells was man- or woman-made, others say it was doctor-made (Skloot 81, 82).'"
After reading that passage, I figured, ok, in a time without a lot of information, it seems reasonable that an unexplained illness or death could be attributed to a voodoo curse; but a) that never really happens, and b) it's 2011, for chrissake! Nope. I was wrong. People use voodoo curses even today; here's a story that cam out a week ago. It seems there's more interest in this subject than I'm yet familiar with.
Since reading that passage and finding that article, I've been very interested in voodoo; it's never been a part of my life, since I grew up white and in the North, and in a very moderately-religious environment.
To put it in more visual context of culture difference:
My world:
Her world:
In the American South, its popularity a direct result of the slave industry, a West African religious practice called Voodoo (or Vodun, or Vodoun) blends different tribes' spirit-worship traditions, and has eventually been incorporated into Creole culture; it is merged with Roman Catholicism, and even incorporates some Native American Indian traditions as well, reflecting the influence of the ethnically-diverse area where it is still practiced today (Alvarado). Voodoo uses the power of intention, and invoking spirits to intercede on the petitioner's behalf, to give meaning and power to charms and talismans--one of the most commonly recognized is the gris-gris (said with the French pronunciation of the word: "gree-gree") bag, which is small enough to be worn around the neck or elsewhere on one's person as an amulet, and contains a special formula of ingredients which are given special meaning because of intention based on the wishes of the person invoking the magic (Alvarado, Voodoo Museum). Voodoo also uses priests or priestesses as vessels through which spirits can speak during ceremonies--often, the priest will suffer physical pain while the spirit inhabits his or her body, and he or she will speak in that spirit's voice while possessed, giving orders and delivering prophecies ("Haitian Voodoo" video, qtd. in Alvarado). Voodoo has been practiced in the New World since at least the time of Christopher Columbus, by slaves brought to Hispaniola from West Africa, and is especially famous in the American South--specifically in New Orleans, Louisiana (Alvarado). Voodoo has been shown to have been practiced by African slaves, as far north as Maryland, though (Wilford). Voodoo has certainly traveled far, and it has become a matter of a lot of interest as a part of American culture, because of its deep connection with African slaves' ancestors. It is as legitimate a religious/spiritual tradition as any other in this country.
Voodoo even has its own VIPs. Papa Legba and Queen Marie LaVeau were my favorites to read about.
A short video about Queen Marie LaVeau:
In Voodoo, people can manifest their ill wishes for individuals, or their property or relationships with others, by putting hexes on them (Emmanuel). In fact, it's even considered fair to try to wrong people who have wronged you--like spirit-mediated karma (Emmanuel). But Voodoo is also used very often for good things: to get money, and to find love, for example (Priestess Fiona). And beyond the ceremonies themselves, it was more a way to keep their social connections intact, which was another positive outcome--as with all religions, a sense of congregation is vitally important to its followers (African American Registry). In New Orleans in the 1800's, freemen of color and slaves given the day off would go to Mass in the mornings on Sundays, and then participate in Voodoo ceremonies in the afternoon in a part of the city called Congo Square, and they would perform rituals for whatever purpose they desired to seek help from the spirits ("Haunted New Orleans"). These ceremonies gave the Voodoos the opportunity to feel connected with their culture, and their ancestors (African American Registry). Henrietta's cousin Cootie believed in Voodoo, possibly because of his sense of connection with the rural historic roots of the Lacks family in Clover, so his conjecture that Henrietta's cancer was "man-made" makes a lot more sense to me, after reading up on Voodoo.
Some images of Voodoo in America:
Some Links For Further Voodoo Information:
Learn More about Voodoo:
Voodoo Among World's Religions
What Do Voodoos Believe?
Important People In Voodoo:
Voodoo Queens And Kings, Past and Present
"Dr." John Montenet
Works Cited:
African American Registry. "Congo Square, the Soul of New Orleans." Aaregistry.org, n.d. Web. 13 Dec. 2011.
Alvarado, Denise. "History of New Orleans Voodoo." Mysticvoodoo.com, copyright 2008-2010. Web. 12 Dec. 2011.
Emmanuel, Houngan. "Voodoo curses, Voodoo hexes, and Voodoo fixes." Realvoodoos.com, copyright 2008-2009. Web. 13 Dec. 2011.
National Geographic. "Haitian Voodoo." Embedded in "History of New Orleans Voodoo." Mysticvoodoo.com, copyright 2008-2010. Web. 12 Dec. 2011.
New OrleansNet LLC. "Haunted New Orleans Voodoo: A Brief History of Voodoo." Nola.com, copyright 2008. Web. 13 Dec. 2011.
Priestess Fiona. Haitianvoodoospells.com, copyright 2007-2011. Web. 13 Dec. 2011.
Skloot, Rebecca. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. New York: Broadway Paperbacks, 2010. Print.
Voodoo Museum. "Gris-Gris." n.d. Web. 12 Dec. 2011.
Wilford, John Noble. "Under Maryland Street, Ties to African Past." New York Times 21 Oct. 2008: 1. Abstract. Academic Search Premier.Web. 13 Dec. 2011.
"'You know, a lot of things, they man-made,' he told me, dropping his voice to a whisper. 'You know what I mean by man-made, don't you?'
I shook my head no.
'Voodoo,' he whispered. 'Some peoples is sayin Henrietta's sickness and them cells was man- or woman-made, others say it was doctor-made (Skloot 81, 82).'"
After reading that passage, I figured, ok, in a time without a lot of information, it seems reasonable that an unexplained illness or death could be attributed to a voodoo curse; but a) that never really happens, and b) it's 2011, for chrissake! Nope. I was wrong. People use voodoo curses even today; here's a story that cam out a week ago. It seems there's more interest in this subject than I'm yet familiar with.
Since reading that passage and finding that article, I've been very interested in voodoo; it's never been a part of my life, since I grew up white and in the North, and in a very moderately-religious environment.
To put it in more visual context of culture difference:
My world:
Fig. 1: Photo of an unknown man shoveling snow in his driveway.
From the website propertyinvestinggenie.com. Accessed
12 December, 2011. Via Google.com Image search.
Fig. 3: Photograph of a tobacco field on a plantation in the
American South. From the website wessyngton.com. Accessed
13 December, 2011. Via Google.com Image search.
In the American South, its popularity a direct result of the slave industry, a West African religious practice called Voodoo (or Vodun, or Vodoun) blends different tribes' spirit-worship traditions, and has eventually been incorporated into Creole culture; it is merged with Roman Catholicism, and even incorporates some Native American Indian traditions as well, reflecting the influence of the ethnically-diverse area where it is still practiced today (Alvarado). Voodoo uses the power of intention, and invoking spirits to intercede on the petitioner's behalf, to give meaning and power to charms and talismans--one of the most commonly recognized is the gris-gris (said with the French pronunciation of the word: "gree-gree") bag, which is small enough to be worn around the neck or elsewhere on one's person as an amulet, and contains a special formula of ingredients which are given special meaning because of intention based on the wishes of the person invoking the magic (Alvarado, Voodoo Museum). Voodoo also uses priests or priestesses as vessels through which spirits can speak during ceremonies--often, the priest will suffer physical pain while the spirit inhabits his or her body, and he or she will speak in that spirit's voice while possessed, giving orders and delivering prophecies ("Haitian Voodoo" video, qtd. in Alvarado). Voodoo has been practiced in the New World since at least the time of Christopher Columbus, by slaves brought to Hispaniola from West Africa, and is especially famous in the American South--specifically in New Orleans, Louisiana (Alvarado). Voodoo has been shown to have been practiced by African slaves, as far north as Maryland, though (Wilford). Voodoo has certainly traveled far, and it has become a matter of a lot of interest as a part of American culture, because of its deep connection with African slaves' ancestors. It is as legitimate a religious/spiritual tradition as any other in this country.
Voodoo even has its own VIPs. Papa Legba and Queen Marie LaVeau were my favorites to read about.
A short video about Queen Marie LaVeau:
In Voodoo, people can manifest their ill wishes for individuals, or their property or relationships with others, by putting hexes on them (Emmanuel). In fact, it's even considered fair to try to wrong people who have wronged you--like spirit-mediated karma (Emmanuel). But Voodoo is also used very often for good things: to get money, and to find love, for example (Priestess Fiona). And beyond the ceremonies themselves, it was more a way to keep their social connections intact, which was another positive outcome--as with all religions, a sense of congregation is vitally important to its followers (African American Registry). In New Orleans in the 1800's, freemen of color and slaves given the day off would go to Mass in the mornings on Sundays, and then participate in Voodoo ceremonies in the afternoon in a part of the city called Congo Square, and they would perform rituals for whatever purpose they desired to seek help from the spirits ("Haunted New Orleans"). These ceremonies gave the Voodoos the opportunity to feel connected with their culture, and their ancestors (African American Registry). Henrietta's cousin Cootie believed in Voodoo, possibly because of his sense of connection with the rural historic roots of the Lacks family in Clover, so his conjecture that Henrietta's cancer was "man-made" makes a lot more sense to me, after reading up on Voodoo.
Fig. 3: Map of the Treme Neighborhood of New Orleans,
where Congo Square (#8 on the map) is located. From
the website cbr.tulane.edu. Accessed 13 December 2011.
Via Google.com Image search.
Some images of Voodoo in America:
Fig. 4: A photo of the inside of the Voodoo Temple in
New Orleans, Louisiana. From the website
sacred-destinations.com. Accessed 13 December 2011.
Via Google.com Image search.
Fig. 5: Photo of Voodoo and Yoruba priestess Ava Kay
Jones. From the website Hauntedamericatours.com
Accessed 13 Dec. 2011. Via Google.com Image Search.
Fig. 6: Photo of a voodoo doll made in New
Orleans. From the website Patrishka.wordpress.com.
Accessed 13 December 2011. Via Google.com
Image search.
Fig. 7: Photo of a gris-gris bag, the
charm most commonly recognized in
Voodoo. From the website
magickworkshop.wordpress.com.
Accessed 13 December 2011.
Via Google.com Image search.
Learn More about Voodoo:
Voodoo Among World's Religions
What Do Voodoos Believe?
Important People In Voodoo:
Voodoo Queens And Kings, Past and Present
"Dr." John Montenet
Works Cited:
African American Registry. "Congo Square, the Soul of New Orleans." Aaregistry.org, n.d. Web. 13 Dec. 2011.
Alvarado, Denise. "History of New Orleans Voodoo." Mysticvoodoo.com, copyright 2008-2010. Web. 12 Dec. 2011.
Emmanuel, Houngan. "Voodoo curses, Voodoo hexes, and Voodoo fixes." Realvoodoos.com, copyright 2008-2009. Web. 13 Dec. 2011.
National Geographic. "Haitian Voodoo." Embedded in "History of New Orleans Voodoo." Mysticvoodoo.com, copyright 2008-2010. Web. 12 Dec. 2011.
New OrleansNet LLC. "Haunted New Orleans Voodoo: A Brief History of Voodoo." Nola.com, copyright 2008. Web. 13 Dec. 2011.
Priestess Fiona. Haitianvoodoospells.com, copyright 2007-2011. Web. 13 Dec. 2011.
Skloot, Rebecca. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. New York: Broadway Paperbacks, 2010. Print.
Voodoo Museum. "Gris-Gris." n.d. Web. 12 Dec. 2011.
Wilford, John Noble. "Under Maryland Street, Ties to African Past." New York Times 21 Oct. 2008: 1. Abstract. Academic Search Premier.Web. 13 Dec. 2011.
Sunday, December 11, 2011
The End, But Not Really The End
"On May 21, 2009, after leaving many messages, I called again. Her voice-mail box was full. So I dialed Sonny's number to say something I'd said to him many times over the years: 'Will you tell your sister to stop messing around and return my calls? I really need to talk to her. Our time is running out.' When he answered the phone I said, 'Hey Sonny, it's Rebecca,' and for a moment the line went silent.
'I've been trying to find your phone number,' he said, and my eyes filled with tears. I knew there was only one reason Sonny would need to call me (p. 307)."
I loved this passage because it shows the quiet sense of what had happened that spread through Skloot as she learned that Deborah had died, and how sad and devastated both Skloot and the family were—they realized how much Deborah had meant to them; for Skloot, it was the professional/personal love/hate relationship that they had developed, and for the family it was the fact that Deborah had kept them all together, more or less, and had been the mouthpiece for them to the public. I think the style shows the starkness of her feelings—there isn’t a word wasted, and there isn’t an extraneous piece of information—Skloot only tells what happened. It’s glaringly obvious what she was feeling as she had this conversation with Sonny. We’ve all had that moment of our hearts dropping down somewhere close to our knees as we hear something, and then there’s not the potential for going back and saying what we really felt. I felt that way with Grandpa Ted when he passed—I had told him I loved him, but there was so much more I wanted to ask him, to learn from him, and so much more fun I wanted to have with him, and when he died, it was all cut off cold turkey. No chance to get one last question or hug in edgewise. I felt like I was there. I could hear the silence around the room, and on the phone line, and I could feel the weight of it before Sonny got out that he was looking to get in touch with Skloot.
The questions that this passage raises to me are about how Skloot chose to write it—did she make conscious decisions to keep it stark and quiet? Or is this just her memory of the situation? Does it really describe what was going on around her? What if there was ambient noise that her mind blocked out, I wonder? And why did Sonny say he was looking for her number? I’m sure they all had it; I wonder if he was just trying to be polite. I wonder if he was ever going to tell her or find a way to tell her if she hadn’t called. I wonder how the rest of the family felt about Skloot going to the funeral, or about being close to them and their turf at all. How did Rebecca feel about the strained nature of her relationship with Deborah the whole time they knew each other? Deborah was always just this side of a total meltdown, and Rebecca often had to deal with her erratic behavior and even defend her own person. Did Skloot decide to forget the fact that Deborah had thrown her up against a wall and only remember the moments of closeness and clarity? I feel like there was a level of sweeping under the rug that Skloot did with those moments, and I don’t know if I would be able to do that. But nonetheless, she is genuinely saddened by Deborah’s death. Would they have continued their relationship once the book was published if Deborah had lived longer, then?
"The younger Deborah said she was glad that when she died, she wouldn't have to tell her mother the story of everything that happened with the cells and the family, because Henrietta already knew. 'She's been watching us and seeing all that's going on down here,' Deborah said. 'She's waiting patiently for us. There won't be any words, just a lot of hugging and crying. I really believe she's up in heaven, and she's doin okay, because she did enough suffering for everyone down here. On the other side, they say there's no pain or suffering....I want to be there with my mother.'
Sitting between me and Davon on the bed, Deborah nodded over at her younger self on the screen and said, 'Heaven looks just like Clover, Virginia. My mother and I always loved it down there more than anywhere else in the world.'
She stroked Davon's hair. 'I don't know how I'm going to go,' she said. 'I just hope it's nice and calm. But I tell you one thing, I don't want to be immortal if it mean living forever, cause then everybody else just die and get old in front of you while you stay the same, and that's just sad.' Then she smiled. 'But maybe I'll come back as some HeLa cells like my mother, that way we can do good together out here in the world.' She paused and nodded again. 'I think I'd like that (p. 309, 310).'"
I think moments like this, with short sentences and plain language, really portray Deborah’s sense of justice and fairness and belonging to the world best. I think Deborah was a plainspoken woman who by some chance on top of a lot of circumstance had not been educated as well as other people might have been, and didn’t understand what her mother’s cells were doing for the world, or even what they were, and she felt as though those cells were still a part of her mother’s consciousness. She knew her mother was a giving, sweet, and caring person who would have wanted to be useful to the world, so she was able to reconcile the way her mother’s cells had been used to benefit medicine and science with her mother’s character, but she didn’t understand that her mother hadn’t been able to feel the pain of being injected with pathogens, or being manipulated or being shot into space. So, she felt that her mother had sacrificed herself even more than she really had, and I think it speaks to Deborah’s sense of connectedness to people that she was ok with that, and even wanted to come back as some HeLa cells after she died, to give herself for the benefit of other people as well. I think, from Deborah’s point of view, that Henrietta was still a part of her cells in culture, and that her intent and her consciousness as a part of those cells was what was her contribution. And I think Deborah wanted to be a part of it. I also see from the way Skloot formed this passage that there were moments of calm for Deborah, where she had clarity and introspection, and I think this passage leaves us with that Deborah, the Deborah she might have been more of the time if her anxiety and her other physical conditions had been cared for better—all of which is tied back into how the family should be recognized for Henrietta’s famous cell line as well. I like this Deborah. I like her guilelessness. I like how her intent toward humanity is so selfless. I think this was the perfect scene to end with, in the book.
Questions that this passage raised for me include mostly how this would have been different if the family had been better educated, and had understood how cells work and how research is done with them better. I thought this throughout the entire book, and I think this now: the fact that the Lackses were so upset by all this was a direct function of how little they knew about science. If they had been given a proper education in the liberal arts and sciences as they were growing up, their suspicion and outright mistrust and hatred for the things they don’t understand would be prevented. I wonder, how could they even listen to people talking about HeLa cells and really get it if theyweren’t given the raw materials with which to understand? What can we do to make sure that there is an adequate length and depth of education for children from poor families who would most likely have to leave school unfairly early to begin to work to support their families? How can we change that? Skloot founded the Henrietta Lacks foundation, but what about people without famous relatives? What about their understanding of the world? What can we do to keep kids in school and learning until they at least complete high school level course work? It would give them a better chance to understand their world, a better chance at higher education and more satisfying work, it would give them a broader experience to inform their political opinions, and it would give them the opportunity to become inspired to make changes in their home environments that would benefit their communities. What if Deborah hadn’t been religious? Would HeLa have meant so much to her understanding of her mother, then? What if Henrietta had refused to give her cells for research, if the doctors at Hopkins had asked? What if the family had closed ranks against Skloot and not told her anything? I think that’s the biggest question. Where would the world be without this story told when there were still relatives who remembered Henrietta and while her children were all alive to have their say (except for Elsie, and what would have happened if Lurz hadn’t been there to speak for her?)? Would Henrietta have been lost entirely to historic mystery?
'I've been trying to find your phone number,' he said, and my eyes filled with tears. I knew there was only one reason Sonny would need to call me (p. 307)."
I loved this passage because it shows the quiet sense of what had happened that spread through Skloot as she learned that Deborah had died, and how sad and devastated both Skloot and the family were—they realized how much Deborah had meant to them; for Skloot, it was the professional/personal love/hate relationship that they had developed, and for the family it was the fact that Deborah had kept them all together, more or less, and had been the mouthpiece for them to the public. I think the style shows the starkness of her feelings—there isn’t a word wasted, and there isn’t an extraneous piece of information—Skloot only tells what happened. It’s glaringly obvious what she was feeling as she had this conversation with Sonny. We’ve all had that moment of our hearts dropping down somewhere close to our knees as we hear something, and then there’s not the potential for going back and saying what we really felt. I felt that way with Grandpa Ted when he passed—I had told him I loved him, but there was so much more I wanted to ask him, to learn from him, and so much more fun I wanted to have with him, and when he died, it was all cut off cold turkey. No chance to get one last question or hug in edgewise. I felt like I was there. I could hear the silence around the room, and on the phone line, and I could feel the weight of it before Sonny got out that he was looking to get in touch with Skloot.
The questions that this passage raises to me are about how Skloot chose to write it—did she make conscious decisions to keep it stark and quiet? Or is this just her memory of the situation? Does it really describe what was going on around her? What if there was ambient noise that her mind blocked out, I wonder? And why did Sonny say he was looking for her number? I’m sure they all had it; I wonder if he was just trying to be polite. I wonder if he was ever going to tell her or find a way to tell her if she hadn’t called. I wonder how the rest of the family felt about Skloot going to the funeral, or about being close to them and their turf at all. How did Rebecca feel about the strained nature of her relationship with Deborah the whole time they knew each other? Deborah was always just this side of a total meltdown, and Rebecca often had to deal with her erratic behavior and even defend her own person. Did Skloot decide to forget the fact that Deborah had thrown her up against a wall and only remember the moments of closeness and clarity? I feel like there was a level of sweeping under the rug that Skloot did with those moments, and I don’t know if I would be able to do that. But nonetheless, she is genuinely saddened by Deborah’s death. Would they have continued their relationship once the book was published if Deborah had lived longer, then?
"The younger Deborah said she was glad that when she died, she wouldn't have to tell her mother the story of everything that happened with the cells and the family, because Henrietta already knew. 'She's been watching us and seeing all that's going on down here,' Deborah said. 'She's waiting patiently for us. There won't be any words, just a lot of hugging and crying. I really believe she's up in heaven, and she's doin okay, because she did enough suffering for everyone down here. On the other side, they say there's no pain or suffering....I want to be there with my mother.'
Sitting between me and Davon on the bed, Deborah nodded over at her younger self on the screen and said, 'Heaven looks just like Clover, Virginia. My mother and I always loved it down there more than anywhere else in the world.'
She stroked Davon's hair. 'I don't know how I'm going to go,' she said. 'I just hope it's nice and calm. But I tell you one thing, I don't want to be immortal if it mean living forever, cause then everybody else just die and get old in front of you while you stay the same, and that's just sad.' Then she smiled. 'But maybe I'll come back as some HeLa cells like my mother, that way we can do good together out here in the world.' She paused and nodded again. 'I think I'd like that (p. 309, 310).'"
I think moments like this, with short sentences and plain language, really portray Deborah’s sense of justice and fairness and belonging to the world best. I think Deborah was a plainspoken woman who by some chance on top of a lot of circumstance had not been educated as well as other people might have been, and didn’t understand what her mother’s cells were doing for the world, or even what they were, and she felt as though those cells were still a part of her mother’s consciousness. She knew her mother was a giving, sweet, and caring person who would have wanted to be useful to the world, so she was able to reconcile the way her mother’s cells had been used to benefit medicine and science with her mother’s character, but she didn’t understand that her mother hadn’t been able to feel the pain of being injected with pathogens, or being manipulated or being shot into space. So, she felt that her mother had sacrificed herself even more than she really had, and I think it speaks to Deborah’s sense of connectedness to people that she was ok with that, and even wanted to come back as some HeLa cells after she died, to give herself for the benefit of other people as well. I think, from Deborah’s point of view, that Henrietta was still a part of her cells in culture, and that her intent and her consciousness as a part of those cells was what was her contribution. And I think Deborah wanted to be a part of it. I also see from the way Skloot formed this passage that there were moments of calm for Deborah, where she had clarity and introspection, and I think this passage leaves us with that Deborah, the Deborah she might have been more of the time if her anxiety and her other physical conditions had been cared for better—all of which is tied back into how the family should be recognized for Henrietta’s famous cell line as well. I like this Deborah. I like her guilelessness. I like how her intent toward humanity is so selfless. I think this was the perfect scene to end with, in the book.
Questions that this passage raised for me include mostly how this would have been different if the family had been better educated, and had understood how cells work and how research is done with them better. I thought this throughout the entire book, and I think this now: the fact that the Lackses were so upset by all this was a direct function of how little they knew about science. If they had been given a proper education in the liberal arts and sciences as they were growing up, their suspicion and outright mistrust and hatred for the things they don’t understand would be prevented. I wonder, how could they even listen to people talking about HeLa cells and really get it if theyweren’t given the raw materials with which to understand? What can we do to make sure that there is an adequate length and depth of education for children from poor families who would most likely have to leave school unfairly early to begin to work to support their families? How can we change that? Skloot founded the Henrietta Lacks foundation, but what about people without famous relatives? What about their understanding of the world? What can we do to keep kids in school and learning until they at least complete high school level course work? It would give them a better chance to understand their world, a better chance at higher education and more satisfying work, it would give them a broader experience to inform their political opinions, and it would give them the opportunity to become inspired to make changes in their home environments that would benefit their communities. What if Deborah hadn’t been religious? Would HeLa have meant so much to her understanding of her mother, then? What if Henrietta had refused to give her cells for research, if the doctors at Hopkins had asked? What if the family had closed ranks against Skloot and not told her anything? I think that’s the biggest question. Where would the world be without this story told when there were still relatives who remembered Henrietta and while her children were all alive to have their say (except for Elsie, and what would have happened if Lurz hadn’t been there to speak for her?)? Would Henrietta have been lost entirely to historic mystery?
Sunday, December 4, 2011
HeLa Bombs Away!
1. How did the scientific community respond to Gartler’s theory about HeLa contamination?
I think Skloot puts it best: "Gartler's findings did not go over well (p.153)." Scientists resisted this finding at first, then gradually accpeted that their cell culture lines were contaminated, and realized that they had spent countless research hours and dollars on what were essentially HeLa hybrids that they thought were unique cultures. According to Robert Stevenson, as quoted by Skloot, the devastation that the scientific community felt regarding this revelation was akin to the mortification and embarrassmen of "drop[ping] a turd in the punch bowl (p.154)." The fact that there were genetic markers which linked the HeLa strain inextricably to the cultures which were believed to be pure and unique made scientists realize, however that they needed to be more careful about contamination of their samples, and I think the HeLa bomb was ultimately an advance for the scientific community because of that--though maybe it wasn't the advance they were hoping for.
4. What type of cancer was George Gey diagnosed with? What specific request did Gey make prior to going into surgery? Why didn’t his surgeons honor his request? Did Gey benefit or profit in any way from his participation in the research studies?
Gey was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 1970, after suffering from enexplicable and profound exhaustion while fishing on the Potomac with some colleagues from Hopkins (p. 170). His final major request was that samples be taken from his tumor, and he gave his researchers specific instructions to get those samples--telling them "work all day and all night if you have to (p.171)." The surgeons working on him decided not to cut into the tumors they found in multiple places in his peritoneal cavity because they were afraid it would be fatal if they were to make an error and cut into an organ (p. 171). Gey did not benefit or profit from the research--he died without making huge amounts of money, and he did not demand any kind of compensation for cell samples when he sent them to colleagues--he just wanted them to be able to do research based on his own findings, and to benefit the medical and scientific research communities in a knowledge capacity--it doesn't seem like he was ever motivated by money.
9. Why did Deborah choose not to request a copy of her mother’s medical records? In spite of her deliberate decision to not read her mother’s medical records, Deborah Lacks still learned extremely upsetting details about her mother’s illness and autopsy. Describe how Deborah found out about her mother’s painful death. How did Deborah react after reading about her mother’s death?
Deborah did not request her mother's medical records because she was afraid to discover something that would upset her, or that she didn't want to know in the first place (p. 209). Finally, she read a portion of a book by Michael Gold, detailing the way Henrietta had died, and her autopsy results, published publicly without permission from the family or from Henrietta herself (p. 209). After she discovered how her mother had died, and how her organs had looked like they were covered in little pearls of tumor, she "fell apart (p. 210)." She cried for days, she grew anxious about the excruciating pain her mother must have suffered while she was in the final stages of her life, and she was swept into anger at the hospital and her family, for divulging those secrets of how awful her mother's condition was toward the end (p.210).
12. Explain the Hayflick limit. Why are HeLa cells able to live beyond the Hayflick limit?
The Hayflick Limit is a phenomenon of biological cell division, discovered by Leonard Hayflick, and published in a 1961 paper which stated that normal cells have essentially 50 duplications before their telomeres were eventually whittled down to nothing, stopping further ability to replicate and thus ending the cell line (p. 216, 217). According to Skloot, a discovery made by Yale scientists shows that cancer cells have "an enzyme called telomerase that rebuilds their telomeres (p. 217)." This means that the telomeres in cancerous cells do not get whittled down, and stand a better chance of being able to replicate in culture ad infinitum because their telomeres can be regenerated (p. 217).
I think Skloot puts it best: "Gartler's findings did not go over well (p.153)." Scientists resisted this finding at first, then gradually accpeted that their cell culture lines were contaminated, and realized that they had spent countless research hours and dollars on what were essentially HeLa hybrids that they thought were unique cultures. According to Robert Stevenson, as quoted by Skloot, the devastation that the scientific community felt regarding this revelation was akin to the mortification and embarrassmen of "drop[ping] a turd in the punch bowl (p.154)." The fact that there were genetic markers which linked the HeLa strain inextricably to the cultures which were believed to be pure and unique made scientists realize, however that they needed to be more careful about contamination of their samples, and I think the HeLa bomb was ultimately an advance for the scientific community because of that--though maybe it wasn't the advance they were hoping for.
4. What type of cancer was George Gey diagnosed with? What specific request did Gey make prior to going into surgery? Why didn’t his surgeons honor his request? Did Gey benefit or profit in any way from his participation in the research studies?
Gey was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 1970, after suffering from enexplicable and profound exhaustion while fishing on the Potomac with some colleagues from Hopkins (p. 170). His final major request was that samples be taken from his tumor, and he gave his researchers specific instructions to get those samples--telling them "work all day and all night if you have to (p.171)." The surgeons working on him decided not to cut into the tumors they found in multiple places in his peritoneal cavity because they were afraid it would be fatal if they were to make an error and cut into an organ (p. 171). Gey did not benefit or profit from the research--he died without making huge amounts of money, and he did not demand any kind of compensation for cell samples when he sent them to colleagues--he just wanted them to be able to do research based on his own findings, and to benefit the medical and scientific research communities in a knowledge capacity--it doesn't seem like he was ever motivated by money.
9. Why did Deborah choose not to request a copy of her mother’s medical records? In spite of her deliberate decision to not read her mother’s medical records, Deborah Lacks still learned extremely upsetting details about her mother’s illness and autopsy. Describe how Deborah found out about her mother’s painful death. How did Deborah react after reading about her mother’s death?
Deborah did not request her mother's medical records because she was afraid to discover something that would upset her, or that she didn't want to know in the first place (p. 209). Finally, she read a portion of a book by Michael Gold, detailing the way Henrietta had died, and her autopsy results, published publicly without permission from the family or from Henrietta herself (p. 209). After she discovered how her mother had died, and how her organs had looked like they were covered in little pearls of tumor, she "fell apart (p. 210)." She cried for days, she grew anxious about the excruciating pain her mother must have suffered while she was in the final stages of her life, and she was swept into anger at the hospital and her family, for divulging those secrets of how awful her mother's condition was toward the end (p.210).
12. Explain the Hayflick limit. Why are HeLa cells able to live beyond the Hayflick limit?
The Hayflick Limit is a phenomenon of biological cell division, discovered by Leonard Hayflick, and published in a 1961 paper which stated that normal cells have essentially 50 duplications before their telomeres were eventually whittled down to nothing, stopping further ability to replicate and thus ending the cell line (p. 216, 217). According to Skloot, a discovery made by Yale scientists shows that cancer cells have "an enzyme called telomerase that rebuilds their telomeres (p. 217)." This means that the telomeres in cancerous cells do not get whittled down, and stand a better chance of being able to replicate in culture ad infinitum because their telomeres can be regenerated (p. 217).
Week 15 Journal: The Beginning of The End
"When Deborah got to her doctor's office, her blood pressure and blood sugar were so high, her doctor was amazed she hadn't had a stroke or heart attack while we were in CLover. With levels like hers, he said, she could still have one any minute. Suddenly her strange behavior on the trip seemed less strange. Confusion, panic, and incoherent speech are all symptoms of extremely high blood pressure and blood sugar, which can lead to heart attack and stroke. So is redness and swelling, which would explain why her red welts didn't go away, despite all the Benadryl she drank. (p. 297)"
I chose this passage because it's a piece of medical information about Deborah, showing how the research about her mother's cells had taken such an awful toll on her, stressing her out to the point where she was a hair's breadth from a major medical catastrophe. All this just to know more about her mother--in the scene before this, her cousin Gary is praying and singing and preaching over her to help her release the "burden" of the stress it was causing her to find out more about her mother. It shows how much she loved her mother, how concerned for her mother's posthumous wellbeing and dignity she was, and how ignorance of medicine is dangerous for people--it gives them room to make up wild and frightening stories about what might be happening behind the scrubs and the white lab coats--making it obvious to me that informed consent and transparency in medicine are absolutely necessary to the healthcare process, just as much as the actual treatments, preventive advice, and procedures performed might be.
The questions that this passage raised for me are: How would this have been different with an upper-middle-class white family in the North who were not particularly religious? Would it have made a difference if Deborah had been given more information and had not experienced the dismissive, mystery-perpetuating treatment she had been given by the medical professionals she had encountered in her search for information about her mother, and in her own visits to her doctor. I also want to know what would have happened if Deborah was being treated for her anxiety during the time when she and Rebecca were doing their research--would she have learned more? Would her behavior have been less erratic, even though her blood pressure and blood sugar were so far out of the normal range?
"Every decade has had its landmark moments in HeLa research, and the connection between HPV and cervical cancer was only one of several in the eighties. At the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, a group of researchers--including a molecular biologist named Richard Axel, who would go on to win a Nobel Prize--infected HeLa cells with HIV. Normally, HIV can infect only blood cells, but Axel had inserted a specific DNA sequence from a blood cell into HeLa cells, which made it possible for HIV to infect them as well. This allowed scientists to determine what was required for HIV to infect a cell--an important step toward understanding the virus, and potentially stopping it. (p. 214)"
When I read this passage, I immediately felt like there was a huge amount of good that has been done by the discoveries HeLa cells have facilitated. I think what drew me to it most, though, was the idea that there was the possibility that all of this research could have *not* ben done; it was like seeing a world without the advances in medical knowledge in my mind's eye. My stomach sank a little after reading it. If my thoughts on informed consent had been law (i.e., that all people should know exactly what's being done to and for them at all times, and be able to refuse treatment or refuse to give tissue samples if they want to) at the time the cells were taken, Henrietta Lacks could have refused to have cells harvested from her tumor, and the world would be significantly different now.
My questions regarding this passage are: What if Henrietta Lacks had refused to donate her cells for research? Claire mentioned this in an earlier discussion board this week, and it's something I've been thinking a lot about too--specifically after having read this passage in the book. Also: what if Day had been less prone to cheating on his wife, and had not brought home the HPV strain that infected Henrietta and eventually led to her cancer and her tumor and her death? What would medicine have done without sacrificing one innocent life for the good of millions of others? Is that really the balance that has been struck? And does that mean that each of us has an equal probability of being called on by forces outside our control or understanding to sacrifice ourselves for the benefit of humanity at large??
I chose this passage because it's a piece of medical information about Deborah, showing how the research about her mother's cells had taken such an awful toll on her, stressing her out to the point where she was a hair's breadth from a major medical catastrophe. All this just to know more about her mother--in the scene before this, her cousin Gary is praying and singing and preaching over her to help her release the "burden" of the stress it was causing her to find out more about her mother. It shows how much she loved her mother, how concerned for her mother's posthumous wellbeing and dignity she was, and how ignorance of medicine is dangerous for people--it gives them room to make up wild and frightening stories about what might be happening behind the scrubs and the white lab coats--making it obvious to me that informed consent and transparency in medicine are absolutely necessary to the healthcare process, just as much as the actual treatments, preventive advice, and procedures performed might be.
The questions that this passage raised for me are: How would this have been different with an upper-middle-class white family in the North who were not particularly religious? Would it have made a difference if Deborah had been given more information and had not experienced the dismissive, mystery-perpetuating treatment she had been given by the medical professionals she had encountered in her search for information about her mother, and in her own visits to her doctor. I also want to know what would have happened if Deborah was being treated for her anxiety during the time when she and Rebecca were doing their research--would she have learned more? Would her behavior have been less erratic, even though her blood pressure and blood sugar were so far out of the normal range?
"Every decade has had its landmark moments in HeLa research, and the connection between HPV and cervical cancer was only one of several in the eighties. At the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, a group of researchers--including a molecular biologist named Richard Axel, who would go on to win a Nobel Prize--infected HeLa cells with HIV. Normally, HIV can infect only blood cells, but Axel had inserted a specific DNA sequence from a blood cell into HeLa cells, which made it possible for HIV to infect them as well. This allowed scientists to determine what was required for HIV to infect a cell--an important step toward understanding the virus, and potentially stopping it. (p. 214)"
When I read this passage, I immediately felt like there was a huge amount of good that has been done by the discoveries HeLa cells have facilitated. I think what drew me to it most, though, was the idea that there was the possibility that all of this research could have *not* ben done; it was like seeing a world without the advances in medical knowledge in my mind's eye. My stomach sank a little after reading it. If my thoughts on informed consent had been law (i.e., that all people should know exactly what's being done to and for them at all times, and be able to refuse treatment or refuse to give tissue samples if they want to) at the time the cells were taken, Henrietta Lacks could have refused to have cells harvested from her tumor, and the world would be significantly different now.
My questions regarding this passage are: What if Henrietta Lacks had refused to donate her cells for research? Claire mentioned this in an earlier discussion board this week, and it's something I've been thinking a lot about too--specifically after having read this passage in the book. Also: what if Day had been less prone to cheating on his wife, and had not brought home the HPV strain that infected Henrietta and eventually led to her cancer and her tumor and her death? What would medicine have done without sacrificing one innocent life for the good of millions of others? Is that really the balance that has been struck? And does that mean that each of us has an equal probability of being called on by forces outside our control or understanding to sacrifice ourselves for the benefit of humanity at large??
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Femme Apologizes to Faulkner Even As She Posts This Sentence
As she absently mixed the filling for the pumpkin pie, she shifted her weight from one foot to the other, preoccupied with the party she was throwing in the evening--stirring, stirring, the wooden spoon making circles in the batter's latte-colored, liquidy mass, until she finally realized she had been repeating the same motion, eyes glazed and unseeing, fixated on the 1970’s vintage clock across the kitchen in her grandmother’s house (the ugliest clock she had ever seen in her life—why had someone chosen to use lime green and tan for rosmaling colors?); she jerked herself out of her reverie, swapped the wooden spoon for a spatula, and held the mixing bowl with one hand over her target, and she scraped out the ginger-and-cinnamon-smelling goo (why did her pie crust never come out like her grandmother’s, even though she used the same recipe?), then licked the spatula, remembering how her grandmother used to let her do it when she helped with the Thanksgiving pies as a child (the smells of the kitchen, and even washing dishes afterward—the soap making swiss-cheese holes in the oily residue inside the pans—were memories she treasured even as she knew how she had resisted helping Nana in the kitchen at the start, squirming out of Mom’s grasp, and trying to run outside with the boy cousins, but eventually getting scooped up and replaced in the fragrant, bustling warmth of bubbling gravy, steaming pies, and a massive bird roasting in the oven—was it the joy of cooking or just Stockholm Syndrome that kept her there year after year, once she had learned to love the smells and the activity of the busy kitchen on Thanksgiving?), and this time, she fixed her gaze out the window, listening for the sounds of the snowfall which was swirling little white specks all over the brown leaves and grass on the ground, and she marveled at the silence of it all, knowing how in just a couple of short hours, there would be a sea of relatives coming through the door, bringing in wet boots and noisy coats and small mittens drying on the Victorian-era radiators; it seemed so idyllic, and she was grateful to have inherited both the house and the hideous clock after all, even with the layer of sadness lying like dust over everything in the house (she had cleaned everything vigorously, at least three or four times, but it was still there), and also despite the new inconvenience of the light rail, which would invariably have a train going by when she needed to cross Hiawatha, but what did that matter when she had a home which had been the epicenter of the family’s warmth and happiness together for 80 years?
Henrietta Lacks and the 10 Plagues On Clover
Henrietta Lacks seemed to be a tiny person with a gale-force personality which could never be minimized or ignored, even in death. She was a spiritual presence even while alive, and after her death, she only got better at spreading her influence. Here are my answers to some questions from the official Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks website, per Mr. Maltman:
Who was Alexis Carrel? Contrast his approach to science and tissue culture with George Gey’s.
Alexis Carrel was a French researcher who had cultured a chicken heart, which he thought would be immortal (like HeLa), but which eventually died (Skloot, 58, 61). He was also a man who believed that some people are born with more or less intrinsic worth than others--he wanted to use cell culture and genetic research to facilitate the creation of a master-race-type genealogical line, and he devoted a lot of his research to finding out how he could do that (Skloot, 59, 60, 61). Scary, weird, and plain evil. Gey, on the other hand, was thinking of the benefit to society generally when he took the cells from Henrietta Lacks, according to Skloot. He didn't want to create an Ubermensch; he just wanted to know what would happen if he ever got a culture to grow and divide indefinitely. He also seemed not to be motivated by potential incomre from his discovery, giving away vials fof HeLa to his colleagues, and hoping that they'd do research with them and give back to the scientific community at large with them.
Cootie seems to know and understand a little bit about HeLa cells, but he believes that Henrietta’s spirit is still present in her cells. What does Cootie think about the reason that HeLa cells were used to develop a polio vaccine? Where does Cootie think Henrietta’s cancer came from?
Cootie seems to think Henrietta saw his suffering as a result of his infection with Polio, and that she intended her cells to be used to help develop the vaccine because of her empathy toward him and her general kindness and good intent toward others (Skloot, 81). He intimated that he thought her cancer was a result of a bad spirit wishing ill on Henrietta, or that it might have been created in her by the doctors at Hopkins (Skloot, 82). According to Skloot, the family and the general population of the primarily-black communities in the South from the time of Henrietta Lacks still believed in Voodoo, and they held the belief that illness could come from being cursed just as much as it could from being exposed to pathogens.
Describe the progression of Henrietta’s cancer in the eight months between her diagnosis and her death. What was Henrietta’s final request? What does this request tell you about her?
Henrietta's body became riddled with tumors, and her major organs were losing function quickly; she was unable to eliminate, and developed toxemia as a result; she had to have clean blood pumped into her to keep her from being completely poisoned by her own metabolic wastes, and eventually she had made such a dent in Hopkins's blood supplies that they stopped her transfusions (Skloot, 83). By the time she died, she suffered from extreme cachexia, and by the end, she was put on only palliative care by order of a doctor at Hopkins (Skloot, 84, 85). Her final request was for Day to care for her children, especially infant Deborah, and to protect them from any harm (Skloot, 85, 86). Her request reveals her to be a very tender, selfless woman, who even in the throes of excruciating pain and near-madness, wanted to ensure her children's welfare, and chose to charge her husband with their care and security. She must have been very wise for her few years, and possessed of a very strong maternal instinct, because the children seemed to be her only focus; she never asked for anything for herself. All she cared about was the fate of her children. She was noble and selfless and stouthearted, and she couldn't leave the earth without the assurance that her children would not suffer. (Unfortunately, Ethel sort of thumbed her nose at Henrietta's request, and abused and neglected the children for years after Henrietta died).
What happened when the family started to bury Henrietta’s body? Henrietta’s cousin says that Henrietta “was tryin’ to tell us somethin’ with that storm.” What do you think she could have been trying to say?
"As Cliff and Fred lowered Henrietta's coffin into her grave and began coveringit with handfuls of dirt, the sky turned black as strap molasses. The rain fell thick and fast. Then came long rumbling thunder, screams from babies, and a blast of wind so strong it tore the metal roof off the barn below the cemetary and sent it flying through the air above Henrietta's grave, its lonf metal slopes flapping like the wings of a giant silver bird. The wind caused fires that burned tobacco fields. It ripped trees from the ground, blew power lines out for miles, and tore one Lacks cousin's wooden cabin clear out of the ground, threw him from the living room into his garden, then landed on top of him, killing him instantly (Skloot, 92). Henrietta must have been trying to say she wasn't done yet--that a part of her still lived and needed to be acknowledged--maybe symbolized by the metal roof--behaving like a living thing, but really only a part of the whole, and unnatural, frightening. I think she was trying to tell people that her death hadn't been peaceful, that she had been in abject agony for a long time before she was called to her Maker, and that she wouldn't let that be for nothing--no one could forget her. No one could make her anonymous. No one in their right mind should underestimate her, either.
Who was Alexis Carrel? Contrast his approach to science and tissue culture with George Gey’s.
Alexis Carrel was a French researcher who had cultured a chicken heart, which he thought would be immortal (like HeLa), but which eventually died (Skloot, 58, 61). He was also a man who believed that some people are born with more or less intrinsic worth than others--he wanted to use cell culture and genetic research to facilitate the creation of a master-race-type genealogical line, and he devoted a lot of his research to finding out how he could do that (Skloot, 59, 60, 61). Scary, weird, and plain evil. Gey, on the other hand, was thinking of the benefit to society generally when he took the cells from Henrietta Lacks, according to Skloot. He didn't want to create an Ubermensch; he just wanted to know what would happen if he ever got a culture to grow and divide indefinitely. He also seemed not to be motivated by potential incomre from his discovery, giving away vials fof HeLa to his colleagues, and hoping that they'd do research with them and give back to the scientific community at large with them.
Cootie seems to know and understand a little bit about HeLa cells, but he believes that Henrietta’s spirit is still present in her cells. What does Cootie think about the reason that HeLa cells were used to develop a polio vaccine? Where does Cootie think Henrietta’s cancer came from?
Cootie seems to think Henrietta saw his suffering as a result of his infection with Polio, and that she intended her cells to be used to help develop the vaccine because of her empathy toward him and her general kindness and good intent toward others (Skloot, 81). He intimated that he thought her cancer was a result of a bad spirit wishing ill on Henrietta, or that it might have been created in her by the doctors at Hopkins (Skloot, 82). According to Skloot, the family and the general population of the primarily-black communities in the South from the time of Henrietta Lacks still believed in Voodoo, and they held the belief that illness could come from being cursed just as much as it could from being exposed to pathogens.
Describe the progression of Henrietta’s cancer in the eight months between her diagnosis and her death. What was Henrietta’s final request? What does this request tell you about her?
Henrietta's body became riddled with tumors, and her major organs were losing function quickly; she was unable to eliminate, and developed toxemia as a result; she had to have clean blood pumped into her to keep her from being completely poisoned by her own metabolic wastes, and eventually she had made such a dent in Hopkins's blood supplies that they stopped her transfusions (Skloot, 83). By the time she died, she suffered from extreme cachexia, and by the end, she was put on only palliative care by order of a doctor at Hopkins (Skloot, 84, 85). Her final request was for Day to care for her children, especially infant Deborah, and to protect them from any harm (Skloot, 85, 86). Her request reveals her to be a very tender, selfless woman, who even in the throes of excruciating pain and near-madness, wanted to ensure her children's welfare, and chose to charge her husband with their care and security. She must have been very wise for her few years, and possessed of a very strong maternal instinct, because the children seemed to be her only focus; she never asked for anything for herself. All she cared about was the fate of her children. She was noble and selfless and stouthearted, and she couldn't leave the earth without the assurance that her children would not suffer. (Unfortunately, Ethel sort of thumbed her nose at Henrietta's request, and abused and neglected the children for years after Henrietta died).
What happened when the family started to bury Henrietta’s body? Henrietta’s cousin says that Henrietta “was tryin’ to tell us somethin’ with that storm.” What do you think she could have been trying to say?
"As Cliff and Fred lowered Henrietta's coffin into her grave and began coveringit with handfuls of dirt, the sky turned black as strap molasses. The rain fell thick and fast. Then came long rumbling thunder, screams from babies, and a blast of wind so strong it tore the metal roof off the barn below the cemetary and sent it flying through the air above Henrietta's grave, its lonf metal slopes flapping like the wings of a giant silver bird. The wind caused fires that burned tobacco fields. It ripped trees from the ground, blew power lines out for miles, and tore one Lacks cousin's wooden cabin clear out of the ground, threw him from the living room into his garden, then landed on top of him, killing him instantly (Skloot, 92). Henrietta must have been trying to say she wasn't done yet--that a part of her still lived and needed to be acknowledged--maybe symbolized by the metal roof--behaving like a living thing, but really only a part of the whole, and unnatural, frightening. I think she was trying to tell people that her death hadn't been peaceful, that she had been in abject agony for a long time before she was called to her Maker, and that she wouldn't let that be for nothing--no one could forget her. No one could make her anonymous. No one in their right mind should underestimate her, either.
TMI and HeLa
"But things weren't all good. Toward the end of her treatments, Henrietta asked her doctor when she'd be better so she could have another child. Until that moment, Henrietta didn't know that the treatments had left her infertile.
Warning patients about fertility loss before cancer treatment was standard practice at Hopkins, and something Howard Jones says he and TeLinde did with every patient. In fact, a year and a half before Henrietta came to Hopkins for treatment, in a paper about hysterectomy, TeLinde wrote :
The psychic effects of hysterectomy, especially on the young, is considerable, and it should not be done without a thorough understanding on the part of the patient [who is] entitled to a simple explanation of the facts [including] loss of reproductive function.... (Skloot, 47)"
1. As I read that passage, images of informed consent lawsuits danced in my head; I felt like I would have been livid if I had not been consulted about my thoughts on potentially being infertile if I went through with a procedure. I think transparency in medicine is the best possible way to prevent both lawsuits and patient distrust. People seem not to trust doctors, and I can sort of see why--not everyone understands human physiology and how to diagnose or prescribe treatment for things, or the side effects they'll experience along with the drugs or other therapies they're prescribed. So, with informed consent laws, I feel like the distrust might be less now than it was before, but I still sort of feel as though there should be even more transparency--maybe a more in-depth explanation to patients of the science behind their therapies, and what to expect on a cellular/molecular level, and how that'll translate into the macro scale to treat their disease or condition, as well as making them feel more informed generally, and therefore more autonomous. Maybe it's the helplessness of having someone else tell you what to do with your own body; maybe it's the fact that people aren't sure what's happening in them, and thus aren't prepared to deal with it very well, but I think that whatever Henrietta Lacks was experiencing, she must have been frightened, and the doctor was probably just trying to spare her feelings (a potentially rude and condescending way to do it to presume she was n't that bright just because she was poor, black, and uneducated, but still, one can only hope it came from a benign intent).
2. I suppose this raises questions for me, if I really think about it. I didn't think much about that when I chose this passage, just thinking that it caused a really visceral reaction of outrage and that I was taken aback by how doctors distanced information from patients. How did they think they were helping in the long run by doing this? Didn't they think of how the patient would feel to discover that they were infertile, and wouldn't it have been something they would have wanted a chance to mull over beforehand if it were being done to them? What sort of information would they have given Henrietta Lacks if she had asked them directly what they were doing? Where would science be if they hadn't acted without her permission? Does that justify the fact that it was done?
"No one knew what happened between Henrietta and Crazy Joe, except that there were some dates and some kisses. But Henrietta and Day had been sharing a bedroom since she was four, so what happened next didn't surprise anyone: they started having children together. Their son Lawrance was born just months after Henrietta's fourteenth birthday; his sister Lucille Elsie Pleasant came along four years later. They were both born on the floor of the home-house like their father, grandmother, and grandfather before them.
People wouldn't use words like epilepsy, mental retardation, or neurosyphilis to describe Elsie's condition until years later. To the folks in Lacks Town, she was just simple. Touched. She came into the world so fast, Day hadn't even gotten back with the midwife when Elsie shot right out and hit her head on the floor. Everyone would say maybe that was what left her mind like an infant's (Skloot, 23)."
Warning patients about fertility loss before cancer treatment was standard practice at Hopkins, and something Howard Jones says he and TeLinde did with every patient. In fact, a year and a half before Henrietta came to Hopkins for treatment, in a paper about hysterectomy, TeLinde wrote :
The psychic effects of hysterectomy, especially on the young, is considerable, and it should not be done without a thorough understanding on the part of the patient [who is] entitled to a simple explanation of the facts [including] loss of reproductive function.... (Skloot, 47)"
1. As I read that passage, images of informed consent lawsuits danced in my head; I felt like I would have been livid if I had not been consulted about my thoughts on potentially being infertile if I went through with a procedure. I think transparency in medicine is the best possible way to prevent both lawsuits and patient distrust. People seem not to trust doctors, and I can sort of see why--not everyone understands human physiology and how to diagnose or prescribe treatment for things, or the side effects they'll experience along with the drugs or other therapies they're prescribed. So, with informed consent laws, I feel like the distrust might be less now than it was before, but I still sort of feel as though there should be even more transparency--maybe a more in-depth explanation to patients of the science behind their therapies, and what to expect on a cellular/molecular level, and how that'll translate into the macro scale to treat their disease or condition, as well as making them feel more informed generally, and therefore more autonomous. Maybe it's the helplessness of having someone else tell you what to do with your own body; maybe it's the fact that people aren't sure what's happening in them, and thus aren't prepared to deal with it very well, but I think that whatever Henrietta Lacks was experiencing, she must have been frightened, and the doctor was probably just trying to spare her feelings (a potentially rude and condescending way to do it to presume she was n't that bright just because she was poor, black, and uneducated, but still, one can only hope it came from a benign intent).
2. I suppose this raises questions for me, if I really think about it. I didn't think much about that when I chose this passage, just thinking that it caused a really visceral reaction of outrage and that I was taken aback by how doctors distanced information from patients. How did they think they were helping in the long run by doing this? Didn't they think of how the patient would feel to discover that they were infertile, and wouldn't it have been something they would have wanted a chance to mull over beforehand if it were being done to them? What sort of information would they have given Henrietta Lacks if she had asked them directly what they were doing? Where would science be if they hadn't acted without her permission? Does that justify the fact that it was done?
"No one knew what happened between Henrietta and Crazy Joe, except that there were some dates and some kisses. But Henrietta and Day had been sharing a bedroom since she was four, so what happened next didn't surprise anyone: they started having children together. Their son Lawrance was born just months after Henrietta's fourteenth birthday; his sister Lucille Elsie Pleasant came along four years later. They were both born on the floor of the home-house like their father, grandmother, and grandfather before them.
People wouldn't use words like epilepsy, mental retardation, or neurosyphilis to describe Elsie's condition until years later. To the folks in Lacks Town, she was just simple. Touched. She came into the world so fast, Day hadn't even gotten back with the midwife when Elsie shot right out and hit her head on the floor. Everyone would say maybe that was what left her mind like an infant's (Skloot, 23)."
- I felt so awful after reading this passage. It made me think of my father’s brother, Brad, who was born in rural Minnesota (Brainerd—yes, Brainerd—why, God, Brainerd?), to a family which was not inbred like the Lackses, but which wasn’t close to any sort of up-to-date healthcare, especially pediatric. Uncle Brad was never diagnosed with Down Syndrome, but I’m sure he had it. It’s the family’s little secret—they mostly just downplayed the things that were wrong with him, acknowledging that he was ‘slow,’ but not getting him any kind of treatment, or putting him in classes which could have helped him acclimate to the world around him, and which could have met him on his level. As it was, he got left largely to his own devices, without much supervision, or support, from his parents (my grandparents), and he watched unbelievable amounts of television, never developed socially, and fell victim to the alcoholism which runs on my father’s side of the family after my Grandma Elsie (another visceral connection to Henrietta Lacks’s daughter’s story) died in 1999. He drank constantly, and my grandfather (whose will to live left when his wife died, though he lived another 9 years after) didn’t stop him, so it was only a matter of time before something terrible happened. I think he got a DWI and was court-ordered to join TeenChallenge, a program for Minnesotan teens (duh) and adults (not so duh—I was surprised to learn this, though I admit I didn’t know much about Teen Challenge to begin with before Uncle Brad had to join) to clean up their acts while receiving on-the-job training for blue-collar work, as well as providing them with housing that is always supervised and kept “clean.” Uncle Brad, whom I had never liked, got clean, made amends with the family over the years, and was apparently doing well, when he got sick. He had colon cancer, and was dead within about eight months of diagnosis. I think that if he had gotten the attention and special-needs services he needed, he could have lived a more happy, functional life, with a lot of structure and without the alcohol. I think he was primarily a victim of overworked, outnumbered parents (my grandparents had five children, and my grandfather worked three jobs to keep the family fed and clothed, which left my grandmother essentially alone to rear all five children, and care for him as well).
- My questions from this passage are: Would Elsie Lacks have been taken better care of at home if the Henrietta and Day had kept her there? Did she know she was different? Was her condition congenital as a result of inbreeding, or was it a result of head trauma at birth?
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Week 13 Discussion Board #3, part B (page 47 of the book)
"But things weren't all good. Toward the end of her treatments, Henrietta asked her doctor when she's be better so she could have another child. Until that moment, Henrietta didn't know that the treatments had left her infertile.
Warning patients about fertility loss before cancer treatment was standard practice at Hopkins, and something Howard Jones says he and TeLinde did with every patient. In fact, a year and a half before Henrietta came to Hopkins for treatment, in a paper about hysterectomy, TeLinde wrote:
'The psychic effect of hysterectomy, especially in the young, is considerable, and it should not be done without a thorough understanding on the part of the patient [who is] entitled to a simple explanation of the facts [including] loss of the reproductve function...It is well to present the facts to such an indivisual and give her ample time to digest them...It is far better for her to make her ow adjustent before the operation than to awaken from the anaesthetic and find it a fait accompli.'"
I think there was a lot of both sexism and racism in the 1950's in the South, and I think Henrietta Lacks was seen as less than the keenly intelligent and common-sense-rich person she was. I think the physicians must have left the fact of the sterilizing effects of hysterectomy out when advising Lacks, either out of oversight or wilful omission of facts that would discourage Lacks from seeking treatment, since she was a poor black woman with five children already.
My questions for this passage are:
1.) Would history have been drastically different if Lacks had chosen not to pursue surgical treatment for her cancer?
2.) If there had been an informed consent law in the 1950's regarding hysterectomies, would the "appendectomies" referred to in Chapter 6 have happened at all? Would poor black women be able to own their bodies? And what if a poor black woman wanted to terminate a pregnancy or voluntarily have a procedure done which would stop her from becoming pregnant again? Would men tell her no, just to exert their power over her race and class and sex? Or would they have been understanding of her need for birth control that her husband couldn't circumvent?
Warning patients about fertility loss before cancer treatment was standard practice at Hopkins, and something Howard Jones says he and TeLinde did with every patient. In fact, a year and a half before Henrietta came to Hopkins for treatment, in a paper about hysterectomy, TeLinde wrote:
'The psychic effect of hysterectomy, especially in the young, is considerable, and it should not be done without a thorough understanding on the part of the patient [who is] entitled to a simple explanation of the facts [including] loss of the reproductve function...It is well to present the facts to such an indivisual and give her ample time to digest them...It is far better for her to make her ow adjustent before the operation than to awaken from the anaesthetic and find it a fait accompli.'"
I think there was a lot of both sexism and racism in the 1950's in the South, and I think Henrietta Lacks was seen as less than the keenly intelligent and common-sense-rich person she was. I think the physicians must have left the fact of the sterilizing effects of hysterectomy out when advising Lacks, either out of oversight or wilful omission of facts that would discourage Lacks from seeking treatment, since she was a poor black woman with five children already.
My questions for this passage are:
1.) Would history have been drastically different if Lacks had chosen not to pursue surgical treatment for her cancer?
2.) If there had been an informed consent law in the 1950's regarding hysterectomies, would the "appendectomies" referred to in Chapter 6 have happened at all? Would poor black women be able to own their bodies? And what if a poor black woman wanted to terminate a pregnancy or voluntarily have a procedure done which would stop her from becoming pregnant again? Would men tell her no, just to exert their power over her race and class and sex? Or would they have been understanding of her need for birth control that her husband couldn't circumvent?
Week 13 Discussion Board #4
Prologue: As a high school student, Skloot began researching HeLa cells to find out more about Henrietta Lacks. Examine pages 5 and 6 and write down each step that Skloot took to begin her research. Skloot went first to the index of her Biology text, then to her dictionary, then used her first computer's Internet capabilities to search for Henrietta Lacks, combed magazines like Ebony and Jet, and calling Directory Assistance in Baltimore, the hometown of the Lacks family, to find David Lacks, going to visit "hospitals, laboratories, and mental institutions," interviewing as many people as she could about Henrietta Lacks's personal life, as well as her contributions to medicine.
Chapter 4:Based on the descriptions of Gey found on pages 38–39, offer three adjectives that best describe his personality. Adventurous. Manic. Genius. I think Gey was desperate to make a discovery that would not only give him fame, but advance medicine far beyond its reaches for the time in which he lived. He was also innovative when presented by challenge; he did not shy away from risk. Instead, he plunged headlong into making whatever he needed with his own hands, using whatever materials were available, to custom-build each piece of machinery to best suit his needs. I think he had an incredible sense of urgency toward his project of growing cells in vitro, and I think he must have lost considerable sleep just trying to make the project better, or thinking of what he'd do with his cells if he ever got any. I think he also knew that he had ideas beyond what anyone else in his field was even conceiving of at the time, and I think only someone like him could have had the ideas, and executed them as well and as passionately as he did.
Choose one chapter and read the notes on it (they start on page 346). Describe the kind of research Skloot used in order to write the chapter. How much work went into the making of those pages? Chapter 2: Clover. Skloot wne to the Virginia Historical Society, looked at the South Boston Library archives, for books about life in the South during the time Henrietta Lacks was growing up (Skloot 348). She also looked for the history of the town of Turner Station, which was an industry town with written documents about it at the "Dundalk Patapsco Neck Historical Society and the North Point Library in Dundalk, Maryland (Skloot 348)." Skloot clearly wanted to present an image of Lacks's life in real, tangible terms, warts and all, and she went to heroic lengths to accrue a base of knowledge about the place, time, and people of Henrietta Lacks and her husand and children.
Chapter 4:Based on the descriptions of Gey found on pages 38–39, offer three adjectives that best describe his personality. Adventurous. Manic. Genius. I think Gey was desperate to make a discovery that would not only give him fame, but advance medicine far beyond its reaches for the time in which he lived. He was also innovative when presented by challenge; he did not shy away from risk. Instead, he plunged headlong into making whatever he needed with his own hands, using whatever materials were available, to custom-build each piece of machinery to best suit his needs. I think he had an incredible sense of urgency toward his project of growing cells in vitro, and I think he must have lost considerable sleep just trying to make the project better, or thinking of what he'd do with his cells if he ever got any. I think he also knew that he had ideas beyond what anyone else in his field was even conceiving of at the time, and I think only someone like him could have had the ideas, and executed them as well and as passionately as he did.
Choose one chapter and read the notes on it (they start on page 346). Describe the kind of research Skloot used in order to write the chapter. How much work went into the making of those pages? Chapter 2: Clover. Skloot wne to the Virginia Historical Society, looked at the South Boston Library archives, for books about life in the South during the time Henrietta Lacks was growing up (Skloot 348). She also looked for the history of the town of Turner Station, which was an industry town with written documents about it at the "Dundalk Patapsco Neck Historical Society and the North Point Library in Dundalk, Maryland (Skloot 348)." Skloot clearly wanted to present an image of Lacks's life in real, tangible terms, warts and all, and she went to heroic lengths to accrue a base of knowledge about the place, time, and people of Henrietta Lacks and her husand and children.
Week 13 Discussion Board #3
"'My nerve broke down,' she said. 'I just couldn't take it. My speech is coming back a little better--I almost had two strokes in two weeks cause of all that stuff with my mother cells.'
Then suddenly she was talking abouther family history, saying somthing about the 'Hospital for Crazy Negroes,' and her mother's grandfather having been a slave owner. 'We all mixed. And one of my mother sisters converted to Puerto Rican.'
Again and again she said 'I can't take this anymore,' amd 'Who are we supposed to trust now?' More than anything, she told me, she wanted to learns about her mother and what her cells had done for science. She said people had been promising her information for decades and never delivering it. 'I'm sick of it,' she said. 'You know what I really want? I want to know, what did my mother smell like? For all my life I just don't know anything, not even the little common little things, like shat coor she like? Did she like to dance? Did she breastfeed me? Lord, I'd like to know that. But nobody ever say nothing.'
SHe laughed and said, 'I tell you one thing--the story's not over yet. You got your work cut out for you, girl. This thing's crazy enough for three books!'"--p.53, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.
So, this passage stood out to me, because there is little mention in science of anthropological detyails about people who have been the subjects of study--more often, we wax biographical about the scientist who does the research than we are about the person whose tissue or behavior or other characteristic is studied. I think this story is unique, because it makes no pretenses about who Skloot is dealing with--it's not condescending, like "The Help," written in "black" vernacular dialect by a white woman--but Skloot does preserve the realness of the words she hears from people talking about Henrietta Lacks. Family members are given direct quotes, without any editing, to preserve intent and authenticity, not to mock them or challenge their dignity. I think there's a little to be said, also, for the fact that Skloot was consumed by passion for this subject--it's apparent in the amount of work she does, that she was consummately invested not only in getting this story out to the public, but to getting the point across to the world--the people who are related to the most important woman in medical history can't afford themselves to see a physician, and they are not recognized as related to someone who turned tissue culture and research on its head, or given royalties from the sale of their own kinswoman's cells, unchanged for fifty years. It is also a stain on American belief that we live in a post-racist society. This family has been directly the subject of discrimination and dehumanization because of their skin color and their socioeconomic background, and that's embarrassing, but what will any of we comfortable white people do with that information? It looks like more of the same thing we've been doing-a sigh, a brief mention of how unfair it is, and then back to business as usual.
This passage raised a couple of questions for me:
1.) What compensation (intellectual property, money, celebrity, recognition, etc) did/will the Lacks family recieve for Henrietta's momentous contribution to medicine?
2.) How did the family warm up to Skloot to finally allow her to ask them questions about Henrietta?
These are the primary questions at the fore of my brain now. More will probably come, as I read more. I think, as a part of a medical family, that the issue of ethics is the most important one set up for discussion and reflection in this book so far--the sense of unfairness that the Lacks family feels about this situation is beyond justified, and I want to know how the medical community, and especially Johns Hopkins Hospital, is going to address it, and when.
Then suddenly she was talking abouther family history, saying somthing about the 'Hospital for Crazy Negroes,' and her mother's grandfather having been a slave owner. 'We all mixed. And one of my mother sisters converted to Puerto Rican.'
Again and again she said 'I can't take this anymore,' amd 'Who are we supposed to trust now?' More than anything, she told me, she wanted to learns about her mother and what her cells had done for science. She said people had been promising her information for decades and never delivering it. 'I'm sick of it,' she said. 'You know what I really want? I want to know, what did my mother smell like? For all my life I just don't know anything, not even the little common little things, like shat coor she like? Did she like to dance? Did she breastfeed me? Lord, I'd like to know that. But nobody ever say nothing.'
SHe laughed and said, 'I tell you one thing--the story's not over yet. You got your work cut out for you, girl. This thing's crazy enough for three books!'"--p.53, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.
So, this passage stood out to me, because there is little mention in science of anthropological detyails about people who have been the subjects of study--more often, we wax biographical about the scientist who does the research than we are about the person whose tissue or behavior or other characteristic is studied. I think this story is unique, because it makes no pretenses about who Skloot is dealing with--it's not condescending, like "The Help," written in "black" vernacular dialect by a white woman--but Skloot does preserve the realness of the words she hears from people talking about Henrietta Lacks. Family members are given direct quotes, without any editing, to preserve intent and authenticity, not to mock them or challenge their dignity. I think there's a little to be said, also, for the fact that Skloot was consumed by passion for this subject--it's apparent in the amount of work she does, that she was consummately invested not only in getting this story out to the public, but to getting the point across to the world--the people who are related to the most important woman in medical history can't afford themselves to see a physician, and they are not recognized as related to someone who turned tissue culture and research on its head, or given royalties from the sale of their own kinswoman's cells, unchanged for fifty years. It is also a stain on American belief that we live in a post-racist society. This family has been directly the subject of discrimination and dehumanization because of their skin color and their socioeconomic background, and that's embarrassing, but what will any of we comfortable white people do with that information? It looks like more of the same thing we've been doing-a sigh, a brief mention of how unfair it is, and then back to business as usual.
This passage raised a couple of questions for me:
1.) What compensation (intellectual property, money, celebrity, recognition, etc) did/will the Lacks family recieve for Henrietta's momentous contribution to medicine?
2.) How did the family warm up to Skloot to finally allow her to ask them questions about Henrietta?
These are the primary questions at the fore of my brain now. More will probably come, as I read more. I think, as a part of a medical family, that the issue of ethics is the most important one set up for discussion and reflection in this book so far--the sense of unfairness that the Lacks family feels about this situation is beyond justified, and I want to know how the medical community, and especially Johns Hopkins Hospital, is going to address it, and when.
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Pics from Halloween!!!!!
So...here are the pics from our Halloween out!
Here's our diva, Cookie Jarre:
Here's a couple of stills from the drag act, singing "I put a spell on you," and the emcee, dressed as Wonder Woman:
He's a shy flower, but here's Miles O'Toole! Finally on camera, and pretty fly for a white guy!
Enjoy! Hope you guys had a safe Halloween (almost a month ago...)
Here's our diva, Cookie Jarre:
Here's a couple of stills from the drag act, singing "I put a spell on you," and the emcee, dressed as Wonder Woman:
He's a shy flower, but here's Miles O'Toole! Finally on camera, and pretty fly for a white guy!
Rough Draft of My Research Essay
So, here it is...
A Toast To Compost (Working Title)
In the 2008 Pixar film, WALL-E, a sweet little robot trash compactor learns about life, love, and personal responsibility on an Earth which has become uninhabitable because of all the trash humans had created, causing them to flee the planet. Aboard the vessel originally meant to carry Earthlings for a mere seven years while the trash-compacting robots do the dirty work, the Axiom, WALL-E learns that the viability of Earth as a home for living things depends on the people who live on it—they are responsible for its condition, and should serve as stewards to the land if they intend to live off of it. While there is roughly a 20 to 50 year span between now and a landfill crisis in the United States alone, what impact human consumption and the subsequent waste created have on the planet is a legitimate concern (Weeks, 2011). More important, though, is what society intends to do about it. It is incumbent on individuals to try to keep their carbon footprints as minimal as possible by significantly reducing the solid waste they send to landfills, and one of the easiest, most effective ways to do that is by composting their organic (food scraps and food-soiled paper) waste, removing it from the total volume of waste ending up in landfills, and ultimately providing a readily available means of enriching the local soil. Composting is easy to do, with a number of resources for individuals to get information on how to start. The process of composting creates humus, a highly potent soil enrichment material, which will benefit anyone with a front lawn, or anyone who wants to garden as well (Journal of Environmental Health, 1995). Composting is also a way of reducing the total volume of solid waste which ends up in landfills, and it benefits areas, like Hennepin County, which have waste-to-energy plants (Collopy-Steinhorst, 2011). Like any other morally-encouraged change to people’s everyday lives (especially regarding response to and mitigation of climate change), there is some resistance to composting, and there are difficulties, as well as challenges to its validity. However, composting is a small, manageable part of a greater movement toward greener living for Americans generally. Finally, composting is an act of ownership in one’s own community, and everyone should know how to do it. It makes a real difference in the quality of the soil in the local area, and it forms habits which are a part of a more globally-important green lifestyle.
Composting is an easy way to get people involved in going green. In fact, it might be one of the easiest ways. Per an interview with Carolyn Collopy-Steinhorst, Waste Reduction and Recycling Specialist at Hennepin County, composting is something so easy that children can get involved in it (Collopy-Steinhorst, 2011). Food waste in households comprises about 20-30% of the total volume of waste, which means a significant decrease in what goes into landfills, which could result in a significant reduction in volume if more households participated in it (Collopy-Steinhorst, 2011). In addition to building environmentally conscious habits early on (maybe a reason why people are so hesitant to begin practices like composting is because they are not exposed to them early on, when the greatest chance for impressions and habits to be formed. It is very difficult to make huge switches in people’s lives and routines, like only purchasing clothing from merchants who use exclusively organic materials in their goods, getting every appliance in their houses swapped for high-efficiency models, and growing their own produce in their backyards. Composting, however, can be done at home, without spending large amounts of money. This means that it’s something everyone can participate in, regardless of economic status, which is something important to a lot of people in the current economic environment. It is also an easy change to make because it is something that can be added on to normal residential curbside waste pickup. In San Francisco, there is a color-coded three-sort system of waste pickup—black for trash, blue for recycling, and green for compost (Swartz, 2002). According to Collopy-Steinhorst, the primary hurdle to getting individuals to recycle or do things to reduce their solid trash waste is convenience—how easy it is for them to make the switch (Collopy-Steinhorst, 2011). Keeping the pickup close to home also gives people an easy way to dispose of their organic waste to a local place which will be cycled back into the local lawns and gardens, even farms. There’s another benefit to keeping the composting local, too—in addition to being a great soil conditioner for local growers, composting locally cuts down on roughly a third of the fossil fuels used in organic farming, the use of which is increased when the compost used to enrich the soil is shipped in from long distances (Glazer, 2007).
Humus, the product of composting, was defined in the Encyclopaedia Britannica “ nonliving, finely divided organic matter in soil, derived from microbial decomposition of plant and animal substances (Encyclopaedia Britannica)”. Humus’s benefits cannot be simulated artificially, which means that composting organic waste is the only way to obtain it in a useful way (Hermann et al, 2011. Per an Environmental Protection Agency, it is mentioned that humus increases the moisture in soil, and helps plants grown in it avoid disease and infestation (EPA, updated 3 Nov, 2011). In the same web page, the EPA claims that compost helps clean up contaminated soil, which is helpful in areas looking to replenish the quality of the dirt (EPA, updated 3 Nov, 2011).
In waste-to energy plants, solid waste picked up by trash collectors is fed in, and it is burned to generate electric power (Collopy-Steinhorst, 2011). In fact, there is enough energy generated to power about 20,000 to 25,000 homes in a year at the Hennepin County facility, at which a thousand tons of waste per day are used to generate power—in fact, all of the trash from Minneapolis is taken to this facility (Collopy-Steinhorst, 2011). Unfortunately, since organic material is so laden with water, it is more difficult to burn off for energy than non-organic waste. If recycling and compost are removed from the total volume of waste sent to the waste-to-energy plant, it yields significantly higher efficiency in generating electricity (Consonni, Vigano, 2011).
Challenges to composting are primarily ones of getting it started (Collopy-Steinhorst, 2011). As with recycling, it is a matter of not knowing what can go into a composting bin, and so people just sort of end up stopping at that point—they’re willing to do it, but not if it requires any significant effort (Collopy-Steinhorst, 2011). Also, not every community has curbside composting pickup. In Minneapolis, the neighborhood of Longfellow has compost pickup, but in the city of St. Paul, the neighborhood of Highland does not. This can be problematic to encouraging people to compost at home, because there is no easy way for individuals to dispose of their organic waste. They would need to spend money on the fuel to haul their own organic waste, spend time to do it, and it does cost money even to have it picked up curbside—and because there are so many collectors, the exact cost is variable, and arbitrary, for any kind of waste to be picked up (Collopy-Steinhorst, 2011).
In Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution and How It Can Renew America, Thomas Friedman claims that “when we act with sustainable values we make it more likely that our natural world and the institutions and companies that undergird our lives and improve our standards of living will also stick around (Friedman, p. 54).” A powerful call to green responsibility as not only a moral act, but one that inspires people out of a pragmatic, self-aware sense of reality,
What goes into compost, and how to do it at home (still undeveloped):
“As of 2007, San Francisco haulers were collecting over 300 tons of organic wastes every day from some 2,100 businesses and 75,000 homes. Trucks take the materials from a downtown processing center to two composting facilities about an hour away. There the waste is ground, mixed and stored for several months until natural decomposition processes turn it into compost. The resulting blends, including a mix called Four Course Compost that is approved for use on organic soils, are sent to local vineyards, small farms and landscaping suppliers. San Francisco also holds a yearly free compost giveaway for residents (Weeks, 2007).”
Works Cited
M.K. Patel, et al. “To Compost or Not To Compost: Carbon and Energy Foorprints of Biodegradable Materials’ Waste Treatment.” Polymer Degredaton & Stablity96.6 (2011): 1159-1171. EBSCO MegaFILE. Web. 5 Nov. 2011.
This article is about the chemical benefits of humus, and I used it for information about humus as a material. I was only able to access the abstract, so I was unable to get the full article and get the specific chemical compounds which are important to farming and gardening.
Glazer, Sarah. "Slow Food Movement." CQ Researcher 26 Jan. 2007: 73-96. Web. 6 Nov. 2011.
This article contained some information about the potential drawbacks of organic farming, vis a vis the cost of shipping compost across long distances, which not only makes the end product more expensive, but also sort of defeats the purpose of locally grown organic produce.
Billitteri, Thomas J. "Reducing Your Carbon Footprint." CQ Researcher 5 Dec. 2008: 985-1008. Web. 3 Nov. 2011.
This article was about how to make a difference in one’s environmental impact, and how people are going about it. I used it for a couple of statistics about how interested people are in managing their carbon footprints, and what they know about how to do it.
Weeks, Jennifer. "Future of Recycling." CQ Researcher 14 Dec. 2007: 1033-60. Web. 3 Nov. 2011.:
The amount of landfill space isn’t the issue, per a 2007 article in CQ Researcher; there isn’t really a lot to worry about generally for the next 20 to 50 years for the United States. But just having the space available doesn’t mean there is no sense of urgency toward making the change to be more conscious of households’ carbon footprints. This article also contained info about how composting has factored in the past, and some statistics about how to compost, and how San Francisco does it.
Swartz, Nikki. “The San Francisco Feat.” Waste Age. April 2002. Web. 3 Nov. 2011.
This article contained information about the recent composting and recycling efforts in San Francisco, and it was used for the statistics of how much of total waste could be diverted from landfills.
“Home Composting goes Mainstream.” Journal of Environmental Health 57.9 (1995):36. Academic Search Premier. Web. 4 Nov. 2011.
This article contained information about how to get started in at-home composting, and referred the reader to the EHMI website and recycling page.
Consonni, Stefano, and Federico Vigano. “Material And Energy Recovery In Integrated Waste Management Systems: The Potential For Energy Recovery.” Waste Management31.9/10 (2011): 2074-2084. EBSCO MegaFILE. Web. 6 Nov. 2011.
In this article, an Italian study about the waste-to-energy process discusses the statistics surrounding efficiency of differing levels of sorted waste; the authors mention how much more efficient the waste-to-energy process is after materials which can be composted or recycled are removed.
Interview with Carolyn Collopy-Steinhorst. Conducted by Catherine E. Larson. In person. 31 Nov. 2011.
In this interview, I asked Collopy-Steinhorst about her position within Hennepin County, and about issues surrounding getting people to recycle and compost. She provided some very interesting statistics about how much people actually do do those things, and what Minneapolis and Hennepin County have to do with how that gets enforced.
Friedman, Thomas L. Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need A Green Revolution—And How It Can Renew America. Release 2.0: Updated and Expanded. Picador/Ferrar, Straus and Giroux. New York. 2009.
Thomas Friedman is a famous environmentalist and political mind, and I wanted something from this book as a call to action in this essay, because I find him supremely interesting and inspiring. I hope the quotes I use from this book are powerful and convincing.
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