The best society is one where every member is driven to lift their equal part, and no one is left with too little or too much of the weight. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot and Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro acts as exemplars for the consequences of when this careful balance falls out of place. Absent from these particular books, societies are most successful when everyone consciously and genuinely sacrifices for the common good, and receives just compensation for their deed. In order for a society to successfully run, its members must be willing to relinquish some of their individual rights for the sake of the common good. Unfortunately, there often comes a point when those offering their services to the common …show more content…
What they could expect, and what wasn’t granted to them was proper justification from the rest of society in response to their using of Henrietta’s cells. The Lackses note that “[Henrietta’s] the most important person in the world and her family living in poverty.” They wonder, “if our mother is so important to science, why can’t we get health insurance” (168). The strength of the common good is crucial, and without it, society would be hard pressed to make improvements such as cancer treatments. But there must be a balance, a tipping point when those giving to the common good aren’t receiving enough back. In Henrietta Lacks, this comes in the form of health insurance, and in Never Let Me Go, it comes in the form of respect. Never Let Me Go is another perfect example of what can go wrong when the balance is grossly out of place. Also centered on the medical field and solutions to deadly diseases, the book focuses on a group of students who have given way too much to the common good. Created by science, students, or “clones”, at Hailsham grew up with knowledge of gloomy days ahead. But only when they had truly discovered their talents and fallen into loving relationships did they realize their lives would be cut short. Although the students at
An abstraction can be defined as something that only exists as an idea. People are considered abstractions when they are dehumanized, forgotten about, or segregated and discriminated against. The scientific community and the media treated Henrietta Lacks and her family as abstractions in several ways including; forgetting the person behind HeLa cells, giving sub-par health care compared to Caucasians, and not giving reparations to the Lacks family. On the other hand, Rebecca Skloot offers a different perspective that is shown throughout the book. Rebecca Skloot’s book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks describes the trials and tribulations the Lacks family has gone through because of HeLa cells and shows how seeing a person as an abstraction is a dangerous thing.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by: Rebecca Skloot has a lot of themes, but one that is most relevant in my opinion is the racial politics of medicine. Throughout the chapters, there were examples of how Henrietta, being African American, prevented her from receiving the same treatment as the white woman sitting right next to her in the waiting room. The story begins with Henrietta going to Johns Hopkins Hospital and asking a physician to check a “knot on her womb.” Skloot describes that Henrietta had been having pain around that area for about a year, and talked about it with her family, but did not do anything until the pains got intolerable. The doctor near her house had checked if she had syphilis, but it came back negative, and he recommended her to go to John Hopkins, a known university hospital that was the only hospital in the area that would treat African American patients during the era of Jim Crow. It was a long commute, but they had no choice. Patient records detail some of her prior history and provide readers with background knowledge: Henrietta was one of ten siblings, having six or seven years of schooling, five children of her own, and a past of declining medical treatments. The odd thing was that she did not follow up on upcoming clinic visits. The tests discovered a purple lump on the cervix about the size of a nickel. Dr. Howard Jones took a sample around the tissue and sent it to the laboratory.
Sometimes people cant help but feel entitled to payment when they make a contribution to a money-making prfit, idea or discovery. The issue is that sometimes, those charities are too small and simple to warrant a reward. Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks brings up the problem of sharing a incentive, as many members of the Lacks family feel justifiable of a share in the money made from research done on Henrietta’s cancer cells. By writing about the Lacks family and their knowledge with the Hela cells, Skloot’s readers may see eye to eye on the fact that they deserve compensation. Although, when the facts are taken into consideration, it makes sense that the Lacks’ do not receive money for their mothers big contribution to science. A donor is usually needed for scientists to make important assumptions or discoveries through studying donated cells or even tissue. However, the donor is not necessarily deserving of a share of any of the profits that the scientist earns because the persons role in the research is much less signifgant than many belive and the actual r...
Feinberg, J. “ The Nature and Value of Rights.” Journal of Value Inquiry 4(1970): 243
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, written by Rebecca Skloot, focuses on what happened to the cells of one unknow Henrietta Lacks, and how it affected her and her family. For years no one even knew the owner of the cells that were hijacked from her body; her name was said wrong, when it was rarely talked about, for decades. There are more long-term issues addressed in this book, however. The story of Henrietta Lacks is a great example of these trends. The issue of civil rights could never be more evident than in Henrietta’s life. Henrietta experienced extreme racism within her medical treatments, the book also addresses the
Today’s society is reluctant to see that there must be a balance between individual rights and public order. In this paper, there are going to be several reasons on why public order is necessary and how individual rights are needed. It will explain the many elements that allow us to live in a society that has both individual rights and public order.
Our society is designed to be absolutely perfect, but in this universe, it is impossible for a society to be completely perfect and non discriminatory towards its citizens. To solve this conflict, we have set forth basic laws to help prevent these issues as much as
Schultz, David, and John R. Vile. The Encyclopedia of Civil Liberties in America. 710-712. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Gale Virtual Reference Library, n.d. Web. 18 Mar. 2010. .
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
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
Furthermore the question of who has rights has a constant impact on what it means to have rights, as the definition of it varies from person to person, and society to society. This question is contested and debated, as it tends to effect the unity of a nation, as is shown in the case of gay rights activists and those in o...
Generally, Society tells us it is searching for the perfect balance of freedom .There is a constant shifting of power, with some having too many privileges and others too little. Even those who believe they have independence are bound by the rules of society. However, it is those who are universally acknowledged as tr...
Rights delineate a space around individuals that must be respected. The study of rights is a struggle to understand how rights may be prioritized, and in what cases the interests of someone may overcome the rights of another. Gewirth and Nagel are both asking whether there are rights which may not be overridden, even in the case where it seems that overriding them would serve some greater common good. They call these rights ‘absolute.’
Justice is the first virtue of Social institutions. Each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override. For this reason justice denies that the loss of freedom for some is made right by a greater good shared by others. It does not allow that sacrifices imposed on a few are outweighed by the larger sum of advantages enjoyed by many. (Rawls, 1971)