This African American woman is Henrietta Lacks and her cancer cells have changed the world in numerous ways. Henrietta was a mother on a tobacco farm in Southern Virginia and suffered from cervical cancer. A doctor from Johns Hopkins Hospital cut a piece of her tumor without her consent and sent it to scientists (without her knowledge). Henrietta's cells were so important because scientists were able to grow her cells in culture and began research on them leading them to be the worlds first immortal cells. Her cells have changed the medical world forever- it has helped advance medicine from polio vaccine to chemotherapy. It wasn't until twenty years after Henrietta's death that her husband & children found out researchers have been shipping her cells all over the world making a multimillion-dollar industry. This became a large mistrust between the Lacks family and the scientific community. A large problem was the fact that they (the Lacks family) were African American- they were all uneducated and doctors/scientist/researchers took complete advantage of that fact. It is know that African americans and doctors have had bad history for many reasons. This is only one example, but a more famous one is the Tuskegee Syphilis study which most of you probably already know. Being white, it is hard to imagine from the African American's perspective of doctors. Of course now it's different but it wasn't that long ago when all these things happened (roughly 1950's).
Nineteenth Century African American Literature
Monday, December 6, 2010
Sunday, December 5, 2010
To Kill a Mockingbird
Blackface
Friday, December 3, 2010
The Crisis
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Fisk University Jubilee Singers
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Slavery beyond the Human Perspective - The Enslavement of Life as a “False Commodity”
As we are all well aware of the horrific evils of slavery in the past (regarding the enslavement of the African American race) and the way in which slavery would serve as a false commodity regarding the items (sugar, cotton, to name a few) that were produced by the slaves. We are also well aware of the persistent slavery in our current day and age, and the interconnection that many industries have in the supporting human enslavement (agriculture, factories, coffee, diamonds, ect.). I want to bring attention, as I hope many of us are aware, of the enslavement of animals for cosmetic testing (one of the many ways in which animals are used as false commodities). Leading cosmetic products use animal testing to make sure the product is safe for human usage. This controversy has, under its wing, the false justification that we should practice animal testing because it benefits human beings, when other methods that prove more satisfactory for knowing actual human reactions are available for companies to use. In other words, animal testing is obsolete. (I have a hard time thinking that it was necessary in the first place, but that is my personal opinion). I think as human beings we have enslaved life (for animals used in animal testing live and die with suffering and with the only purpose of having chemicals inserted into their eyes, skin, or bodies) under the illusion that it benefits us some way or other, in an economical perspective or other. In the past and present there were/are alternatives for the same products and the only thing they require out of the consumers is consciousness and attention to the products they are demanding.
Below I posted some links to sites that help guide anyone who is interested in changing some consumer habits:
http://leapingbunny.org/indexcus.phphttp://www.humanesociety.org/issues/cosmetic_testing/
and lastly a video by PETA that is graphic so be warned…