HeLa cells still being used in science especially in Ebola virus Essay

HeLa cells still being used in science especially in Ebola virus - Essay Example Though the cells have been beneficial to the entire society, the way they were extracted, and the way they are being used has been criticized by many authors. Despite criticism, HeLA cells are still being used for every aspect in science today, and are being used to develop vaccinations that can fight the Ebola Virus, which has become a great threat to human beings. â€Å"The Immortal life of Henrietta† by Rebecca Skloot highlights how HeLa cells have been beneficial to the entire world. On October, 4, 1951, Henrietta Lacks, a 31 year old woman, and a mother died of cervical cancer. As it was the norm to take biopsy samples from patients, doctors took her cancerous tumors to enhance their study. However, this was done without her knowledge. Doctors, George Gey and Mary Kubicek, overcame laboratory failures, and succeeded in keeping human cancer cells alive and growing forever. Since then, the HeLa cells have been used to develop important vaccines and cancer medicines. In Skloot’s book she writes that the cells are also being used in processes such as cloning, gene mapping, as well as in vitro fertilization (Skloot 369). Moreover, cancer survivors who were being treated alongside Henrietta were not aware until mid-1970s that the cells from Henrietta’s cancer have been used to save their lives. After this discovery, many med ical researchers sought to know more about the cells, and why they are special. University of Minnesota scientists discovered that the cells could be infected with a virus that causes polio. With this knowledge the cells provided a quick way test of the usefulness of the Salk polio vaccine. It was discovered that if vaccinated patients produced antibodies that would prevent the disease, his or her blood plasma would prevent polio when it mixed with HeLa cells and poliovirus in laboratories. The research has been operated and funded by African-American researchers

Art Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 5

Art - Essay Example It is true that media artists today consider both aesthetics and ethics in their work. In the current investigation, my point of view is that the most important thing in a work of art is its ethical qualities, because no matter how hard one tries, one cannot get away from ethics. To me, concentrating wholly on form and ignoring ethics is basically blinding oneself to a critical aspect of artistic creation and (especially) consumption. Television, movies, and other media arts are judged in terms of morality and ethical qualities as a foremost consideration; to ignore this aspect borders on folly. Media arts are made for public consumption, and part of this public consumption is the ethical judgment of the genre and the product. Television must pass censorship standards, and movies must pass ratings standards. When people watch a movie, especially a mass-market production, they are often watching an ethical polarization of good and evil (good guys vs. bad guys). And if there is ambiguity between who is the bad guy and the good guy, this is also a moral or ethical question. â€Å"From our casual conversations about the moral status of cinematic villains and heroines, through debates about the effects of the portrayal of violence by Hollywood International, to arguments about the portrayal of sex and sexuality, film talk is intimately tied up with ethical concerns and evaluations† (Meskin, 2009). The same can be said of talk about other media arts, especially television, which seeks to appeal to a mass market kind of morality or ethics. To say that media arts is only for malism is all well in good in a very limited art-house context, but to consider the real situation, one must accept the mass-media perspective. In this perspective, ethics and morality are explicitly involved in the consumption of media arts. One cannot subtract ethics from this consideration; to do so would be to lose a large piece of the puzzle in terms of how human beings react