It has now been 6 1/2 weeks since 10th grade has begun... and it has been pretty wild - not exactly in a fun way, though. A few weeks back, for English class, we had to create a presentation that discusses an issue brought up in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot. We then had to connect that issue to our world today and discuss it. The part I hated about this assignment was the fact that we had to do all of this in front of the class. I've made speeches in front of the class back in 8th grade, but that was about myself. It was a totally different concept. I hated it back then as well, but this one is worse because the topic is so serious. The topics are different for everyone, but they're all controversial. To make things even more serious, we had to literally make a PowerPoint and present it! It's so professional. For the past few weeks, this was all I could think about. It was driving me crazy! I'm normally a very quiet person, so to suddenly present a controversial issue to the class was horrible for me. The good part is that it all went well. I spoke nice and loud, used appropriate hand gestures, and had valuable information to convey. I only wish I had spoken slightly slower, as I feel I went a bit fast. I also wish that I had less words on my slides so it can look neat and there would be room for more pictures. I was trying to follow the instructions of citing my evidence, but it caused lack of space.
My topic was on the rights to property in the medical world. Back in the late 1900s, doctors, researchers, and sometimes journalists really crossed their boundaries and were responsible for severe injustice done to innocent people - patients, in particular. Doctors would extract tissue, blood, or any part of the human body from a person without permission. A researcher would then perform research on it, possibly "manufacturing" their own cell line, and most likely earn a lot of money. A journalist would then publish all this information for the public to read, meanwhile the original patient this all came from isn't aware all of this is happening. In what way is any of that fair? In this case with Henrietta, doctors took her tissue and produced an entire line of cells called HeLa, proving to be a lucrative source in terms of money and scientific knowledge. Yet, she nor her family ever knew. Henrietta was a celebrity that was both microscopic and at the same time long enough to wrap around the entire planet countless times. Researchers made money out of her, yet her family was living in poverty, unable to afford even health insurance. The novel The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks has been adapted into a film recently, and yet the Lacks family is still poor today. What about this is right? It's absolutely ridiculous!
Back then, a journalist got a hold of Henrietta's medical records, which included extremely revealing and gruesome details. It was then published for the whole world to see, yet the Lacks family themselves had never even seen those records. Although such a lack of ethics can't happen today, it's still a huge invasion of privacy. However, obtaining tissue from patients without permission is actually legal in some parts of the world, such as Russia. There are many cases regarding it in today's modern world. This needs to be changed.
Think about it. Let's say you have a teddy bear that you love so dearly. One day, you come into your room and see that someone ruined your teddy bear. The button-eyes are hanging on with a loose thread, the stitching is falling apart, and its fur is discolored. You're extremely upset by this, but you still keep it. The next day, you see that the teddy bear is missing. You look everywhere, but it's nowhere to be found. The day after, you find your teddy bear, but it seems that someone pulled all the stuffing out of it, the button-eyes are gone, and the arms and legs are ripped off. This is even worse than before. Even though the bear was ruined before, you appreciated what was left of it. The stuffing, the eyes, legs, and arms made you feel closer to it than if you threw it out. But without all those things, it's true that the bear is still ruined, but now it feels more like an empty vessel instead of the friend you once had. That's kind of like what happened to Henrietta Lacks. She was treated as an object of which doctors could extract parts of her without asking anyone. But she's not an object. She's a daughter, sister, cousin, friend, wife, and mother. She is a person. In this case, the teddy bear was your friend. I don't like how this teddy bear analogy got a bit dark, but I think it gets the point across.
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