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.