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Private good prevails over public good, as people tend to act in their self-interest. They want what they think will propel their life forward. Private good only gives us a temporary pleasure that influences us to want more. On the other hand, public good generates a sense of contentment to the individual, which can spread to the rest of society. Ideally, public good should be more pursued for an individual to embrace a good life as it encompasses happiness that private good cannot produce. “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” and “The Prisoner Who Wore Glasses” demonstrate how people make choices for their own benefit, one where a family’s privacy is violated and the other where bribery reigns. Both readings also illustrate that interest in the public good would help maintain a good life and the outcome of the choices would be favorable to the majority. When we want to satisfy our many desires, we begin to affect those around us. In the reading “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks”, Henrietta Lacks seems to play the role of …show more content…
As a result, Span One becomes one of the most hardworking groups in the camp. People perform better under circumstances that they can withstand, and they will feel less inclined to use trickery or harass others to obtain necessary items. People are capable of hard work, but sometimes it becomes difficult, when they are faced with overwhelming challenges and need the assurance that they can get through them. Thus by having more perks, Span One gains the strength to persevere because of the new benefits, which spur sparks of happiness. In reality, if the populace were treated with more fairness, people would be more willing to work diligently and collaborate. When one sector of society functions efficiently, it creates a chain reaction that will spread the development to the rest of the
In this paper, I will analyze Rebecca Skloot’s book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, concentrating on Henrietta Lacks’ life, as well as ethical controversies and sociological impact surrounding the HeLa cells. First, I will discuss the author’s main arguments and the type of evidence used throughout the paper. Then, I will summarize the life of Henrietta Lacks focusing on her diagnosis and treatment up to her death. After, I will describe the ethical debates that the author presented and how they relate to Henrietta Lacks and the HeLa cells. Finally, I will examine the impact HeLa cells have had on the society, specifically regarding the medical community, as well as the effect HeLa cells had on Henrietta’s family.
The first of four views in the book is Henrietta’s life and family. Henrietta was a black woman born August 1, 1920 in Roanoke, Virginia. She had her first child when she was 14 with her cousin Day. She then has a baby girl and then married when she was 18 on April 10, 1941. It all started after Henrietta’s fifth child was born when Henrietta said that she felt a knot inside of her womb. Her friends said it was just her baby, but Henrietta knew it wasn’t. She decided to go to the hospital and had a biopsy taken of a lump the size of a nickel in her cervix. She ended up being right; finding out that she had cervical cancer. Back then radium was used to treat cancer so they put a radium tube in and sent her home. While all of this was going on, Henrietta took her mentally challenged daughter to a mental institute hoping she’ll have a better life with more care. Henrietta then started receiving spot radiation treatments to try to get rid of the cancer. Her skin started to char af...
Imagine having a part of your body taken from you without your permission, and then having those cells that are a part of your body grow and are being processed in labs around the world and then ultimately being used for the highest of research. That is what happens to Henrietta Lacks. In the book, The Immoral Life of Henrietta Lacks, we see Henrietta Lacks and her families story unravel, the numerous hardships that they faced, and the shocking revelation that their relative cells were being used for research without her consent and theirs.
Before reading this book, I had never heard of Henrietta Lacks or HeLa. I found her story very interesting. Personally, I was unaware that discrimination was still such a big issue in the 1950s and that informed consent did not yet exist in this time period. The book is very well written and also understandable for people who don’t have a background in science. The story of Henrietta is fascinating and I would recommend anyone to read it.
...through society and enacting that awareness as a vehicle for change we are left to repeat these same injustices. Henrietta's cells gave society the ability to cure diseases, fight cancer, vaccinate children, and by leaps and bounds further our knowledge of biology at large. At what price does this progress come and who reaps these benefits? Henrietta's children do not have access to the advancements their mother's body is responsible for and nor do countless other individuals on this planet. Where is the line drawn? The extraction of HeLa cells without consent from Henrietta did not mark the exploitative end or the cells would have remained a communal property within the science community. The story of Henrietta and her cells is one small act of a greater play that showcases the exploitative nature of capitalism and the forlorn society it perpetuates indefinitely.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a wholesome story about hope, science, and coming together as a family in a new, strange environment. The story consists of the author: Rebecca Skloot, endeavoring on a lifechanging journey which spans states, as well as time periods. The main struggle of the story is John Hopkin’s use of Henrietta’s Lacks’ cells without her knowledge. After Henrietta’s death, the scientific community receives these cells, and begins to make groundbreaking advances in the fields of medicine, cancer research, and virology. The main conflict in the story is what the family should receive in terms of compensation for Henrietta’s cells. The plot continues to thicken when Henrietta’s daughter: Deborah, begins to discover more about her mother’s past, as well as her mother’s cells effects on most, if not all of humanity.
John Stuart Mill believes in a utilitarian society where people are seen as “things.” Moreover, in utilitarianism the focus of the goal is “forward-looking”, in looking at the consequences but not the ini...
Rebecca Skloot’s novel, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, depicts the violation of medical ethics from the patient and researcher perspectives specifically when race, poverty, and lack of medical education are factors. The novel takes place in the southern United States in 1951. Henrietta Lacks is born in a poor rural town, Clover, but eventually moves to urban Turner Station. She was diagnosed and treated for cervical cancer at Johns Hopkins hospital where cells was unknowingly taken from her and used for scientific research. Rebecca Skloot describes this when she writes, “But first—though no one had told Henrietta that TeLinde was collecting sample or asked she wanted to be a donor—Wharton picked up a sharp knife and shaved two dime-sized pieces of tissue from Henrietta's cervix: one from her tumor, and one from the healthy cervical tissue nearby. Then he placed the samples in a glass dish” (33). The simple act of taking cells, which the physicians did not even think twice about, caused decades
In the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, many characters must adjust to the face of adversity to better their
The following analysis deals with the nature and source of evil and whether, given our innate motives and moral obligation, we willingly choose to succumb to our desires or are slaves of our passion. From this argument, I intend to show that our human nature requires that we play into our desires in order to affirm our free will. This is not to say that our desires are necessarily evil, but quite the opposite. In some sense, whatever people actually want has some relative value to them, and that all wanted things contain some good. But given that there are so many such goods and a whole spectrum of varying arrangements among them, that there is no way we can conceive anything as embodying an overall good just because it is to some degree wanted by one or a group of persons. In this light, there arises conflict which can only be resolved by a priority system defined by a code, maybe of moral foundations, which allows us to analyze the complexities of human motivation. I do not intend to set down the boundaries of such a notion, nor do I want to answer whether it benefits one to lead a morally good life, but rather want to find out how the constructs of good and evil affect our freedom to choose.
The story about Henrietta Lacks is the evidence that the ethics of medical processes need to be improved. For a long time, many patients have been victims of malpractice. Sometimes, the doctors still can do anything without the agreement from patients. Any medical institution needs to hold the integrity on any consent form that is signed by a patient. To summarize, the story of Henrietta Lacks could be the way to improve the standardization and equality of medical institutions in the future.
Plato’s Republic, is a thought provoking book that have guidelines to create and sustain a near utopic city, at least in Socrates’s eyes. Socrates is engaging in a noble pursuit to create a society that does not focus on the individuals or an elite minority class, but to achieve the common good for everyone who dwell in the city. In my essay, I will explore the purposes of Socrates’s city of necessity, and in contrast Glaucon’s “luxurious” city, deconstruct the Guardians, and justice in the city and soul.
A public good is a good that is non-rivalrous and non-excludable. An example of this is the air we breathe. Me breathing in air, does not effect someone else breathing in air so it is not rivalrous. There is also no way to regulate the amount of air someone breathes, or who can breathe it, so air is also non-excludable. This can also be called a pure public good, because it is perfectly non-rivalrous and non-excludable. With pure public goods, there are also impure public goods. These types of goods have aspects of them which are public, and aspects that are private. An impure public good can be non-rivalrous, but at the same time excludable. Private goods are rivalrous and excludable, so the excludable part is the private aspect of the good. A real-life example of an impure public good is cable television. Although me getting cable television and watching it has no effect on another person who does the same thing, the cable company can refuse to provide somebody with the same good. Therefore, cable television is excludable, but it can also be seen as non-rivalrous. An example that pertains more to marine biodiversity, and environmental life are whales. They can initially be seen as a common resource, because they reside in the open seas. However, after being protected, they become an impure public good. This is because although they remain non-rivalrous, they are now excludable. The difference between cable television and whales is the fact that whales have values beyond just having them. Whales provide benefits other than just the fact that you have them and these benefits are what make the conserv...
‘Public space is what in many ways makes cities more livable’, said Richard Rogers (2014). Rogers stated (2014) that public space between buildings influences both the built form and the civic quality of the city, be streets, public squares or parks. The balance between public and private realm is needed to apply practice’s design approach. City is beyond than bright of street light, shops, crowds, and weather. The city should be dense, vibrant and socially diverse where buildings and the surrounding should connect and interpret one another, with outdoor open air spaces functioning. However, the city also contains neglected public spaces that are underused and need more attention. These open spaces contribute to local economies and property values, they help people save on everything from heath care to recreation, and perform valuable ecosystem services that naturally improve the air they breathe and the water for drink. In my opinion, people who live in the city think that they like nature, but actually they need the nature as their necessity. In Singapore context, one of the identity of being garden city is need the understanding of Local urban culture and life, not just about physical attributes that typical public spaces are designed only by greeneries element. The relationship among buildings, people and public spaces demonstrate how the architect's responsibility can successfully extend beyond the aesthetic element to include the public realm. The relationship the square or street and surrounding buildings helps to stimulate public activities and create friendly environment that have social emotional, cognitive, and even psychological needs are met. Yet, large areas of neglected, poverty and empty quarters, could demolish th...
As the world’s urban centers boom, cities become spaces where increasingly diverse peoples negotiate such differences as language, ethnicity and race, and wealth. The fate of truly public space hinges on how these and other challenges are addressed, like exponential growth and increasing social and cultural complexity and other issues: Who has the right to the city? Who determines exclusion and expulsion from the ‘public’ and what effects does it hold on our fundamental ideals? (Blomley, 2000)