For almost 40 years after the end of World War II, the work of Ernest Everett Just was an African-American biologist and educator best known for his pioneering work in the physiology of development, especially in fertilization of the fundamental role of the cell surface in the development of organisms. In his work within marine biology, cytology and parthenogenesis, he advocated the study of whole cells under normal conditions, rather than simply breaking them apart in a laboratory setting. Ernest Everett Just was born on August 14, 1883, in Charleston, South Carolina, to Charles Frazier and Mary Matthews Just. Known as an intelligent and inquisitive student, he studied at Kimball Hall Academy in New Hampshire before coming to Dartmouth College.Just discovered an …show more content…
That same year, Just married Hedwig Schnetzler, a philosophy student he had met in Berlin. In 1940, the German Nazis imprisoned Just in a camp, but, with the help of his wife's father, he was released. After making their way out of France, the couple gave birth to daughter Elisabeth. Earnest Just died of pancreatic cancer in Washington, D.C., on October 27, 1941. He is buried at the Lincoln Memorial Cemetery in Suitland, Maryland. Thus, Just’s example provides support to all young scientists today whose work leads them to challenge the accepted paradigms. Third, Just emphasized the importance of preserving the integrity of the cell or organism under investigation in the laboratory. “The cell is never a tool,” he wrote. It is a living system and not a machine that can be used to “prove a theory.” As we biochemists and molecular biologists go about our work to understand the molecular structure and function of living systems, we would do well to heed Justs words. The top-down view should always be kept in
Throughout the American South, of many Negro’s childhood, the system of segregation determined the patterns of life. Blacks attended separate schools from whites, were barred from pools and parks where whites swam and played, from cafes and hotels where whites ate and slept. On sidewalks, they were expected to step aside for whites. It took a brave person to challenge this system, when those that did suffered a white storm of rancour. Affronting this hatred, with assistance from the Federal Government, were nine courageous school children, permitted into the 1957/8 school year at Little Rock Central High. The unofficial leader of this band of students was Ernest Green.
The initiative wasn’t taken to learn about the family or the origin of the cells. Roland H. Berg, a press officer at the NFIP, sent George Gey, head of tissue-research at John Hopkins, a letter saying, “ An intrinsic part of this story would be to describe how these cells, originally obtained from Henrietta Lakes, are being grown and used for the benefit of mankind” (pg. 106). This letter is a very clear representation of the lack of knowledge from society. Berg referred to Henrietta as “Henrietta Lakes” on multiple occasions in the letter. The correct form of her name wasn’t even known. A name is such a distinct representation of identity and Henrietta’s was so commonly mixed up and misspelled. An opposing view could argue that the scientists’ job was to work with the cells. Their goal was not to learn the family tree of the individual, but to make discoveries using the cells. It wasn’t until the autopsy of Henrietta Lacks, that people started to face reality: HeLa is not just a cell line. HeLa was a mother, a daughter, a sister, and a best friend. Mary Gey, George Gey’s wife and research assistant, viewed Henrietta’s body once it was being used for tests in the autopsy room. She noticed that Henrietta had her toenails painted with a bright red polish. Mrs. Gey said, “When I saw those toenails, I nearly fainted. I
Henrietta’s cells were being inaugurated with space travel, infused into rat cells, and even being used to make infertile hens fertile again. However, these are only a few of the many accomplishments that Henrietta’s immortal cells made possible: “The National Cancer Institute was using various cells, including HeLa, to screen more than thirty thousand chemicals and plant extracts, which would yield several of today’s most widely used and effective chemotherapy drugs, including Vincristine and Taxol,”(pg.139). This example of logos from the text again shows just how important these Henrietta’s cells were to the future developments in
Thus being born half-white, his views and ideas were sometimes not in the best interest of his people. William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was born on February 23, 1868 in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Du Bois had a poor but relatively happy New England childhood. While still in high school he began his long writing career by serving as a correspondent for newspapers in New York and in Springfield, Massachusetts. After his high school graduation he enrolled at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee.
The book draws its name from the first essay, "The Lives of a Cell," in which Thomas offers his observations on ecology and the role of cellular activity. He writes that the "uniformity of the earth's life, more astonishing then its diversity, is accountable by the high probability that we derived, originally, from some single cell, fertilized in a bolt of lightning as the earth cooled" (3).
With a competitive spirit, people are driven to act in ways that they would not otherwise and the results can be drastic. In the case of James D. Watson and Francis Crick, in Watson’s novel the Double Helix, this sensation of competition leads to one of the greatest discoveries in biology. But the actions of Watson, Crick, and their competitors may or may not be justified for the results that they yield; the powerful conflict of rivalry has beneficial, detrimental, and questionably moral consequences that shaped the pathway to DNA’s structure.
‘The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks’ is about a black woman who died in 1951. Her cancerous cervix cells, taken without her knowledge by a doctor at John Hopkins Hospital, were the first ‘immortal cells’, meaning they could be cultured in a lab. Her cell line, named HeLa (after Henrietta Lacks), then became one of the most important tools in medicine. However, this book not only focusses on the scientific story of HeLa cells, but also on the story of the woman behind the cells. It consists of three storylines, which will all be described below.
Prior to the successful cultivation of HeLa cells, failure was met with every attempt to grow cells in culture. This roadblock became the focused work of Dr. George Gey of Johns Hopkins University. Johns Hopkins served most of the impoverished black community seeking care in the immediate Maryland area. This provided a goldmine for medical research that was justified by its “generosity” and Samaritan charter. Henrietta Lacks decision to seek care for her cervical cancer unknowingly designated her as arguably the single greatest contribution to science and medicine. After the realization that human cells had finally been successfully harvested and reproduced, Dr. Gey immediately distributed the cells and his methodology to anyone who asked. As the explosion of research on HeLa cells swept across the scientific community many of Dr. Gey's colleagues urged him to publish or patent cells to take credit for his for work but his dedication to the work rather than the credit prevented him from doing much publishing if any at all. The implica...
On April 23, 1791, a great man was born; fifteenth president of the United States, James Buchanan.He was born near Mercersburg, Pennsylvania. His father, James Buchanan, and his mother Elizabeth Speer Buchanan, raised their son a Presbyterian. He grew up in a well to do home, being the eldest of eleven other siblings. His parents cared for them all in their mansion in Pennsylvania. They sent him to Dickinson College.
Hans Spemann was the next person to make an important discovery in 1902. He attempted to split apart a two-celled embryo of a salamander. He accomplished this task by using a baby’s hair to split th...
For many year, scientists have been researching and experimenting to understand how life on earth began and what was the turning point. Many studies and research were done in order to answer this question. After many years of research, scientists finally discovered the essence of life to be the cell. In order to consider something alive, the cells in the organism should be able to grow, reproduce, have the ability to process information, and carry out chemical reactions (Freeman 1). Even though cells are small, they are very complex and they are the functional unit in the human body. After discovering the cell, scientists wanted to know what is the structure of the cell. Under a microscope, an english scientist by the name of Robert Hooke was able to first observe the cell under a microscope using a part of a tree (Karp 2). Scientists divided cells into two different categories; eukaryotic cells and prokaryotic cells; each category has specific characteristics that defines each kind of cell. For instance, eukaryotic cells have a membrane bound organelle called the nucleus as well as ...
He was also the first to take a nucleus from a fully contrast tadpole intestinal
This story shows a love story within a war time setting. Many people believe that
Henrietta Lacks was an African American woman who died from cervical cancer in the 1950s. She sought treatment at Johns Hopkins hospital, where she visited many times and eventually passed away. During visits, her cells were taken without her consent, and given to scientist George Gey. Gey quickly realized that Henrietta’s cells were not like other cells that he had grown in his laboratory; they had the ability to grow exponentially in a cell culture, known as HeLa, and soon became seen as immortal cells. Not only that, the cells soon became one of the most prolific resources in medical research, having a major impact in the development of polio vaccines, cloning, gene mapping, and much more. HeLa became a medical controversy, not only because it helped the science world achieve so much, but also because of the ethical quandaries that it developed.
How do I describe Edward Hyde? People in the story said that he was ugly and didn’t look human. This kind of scared me a little bit. They said that he looked like Satan himself. This made me think of the actual devil. They also said that he has an” air of deformity without being deformed”. I was thinking that he looked like a mixture of the devil and a goat. They said he looked foul and unpleasing to the human eye. So I thought about a whole bunch of animals faces put together on a human body. This was my interpretation on how Edward Hyde looks like. Ugly and not pleasing to look