The book is filled with stories of people used as research subjects, sometimes without their knowledge, sometimes with ill-informed consent, sometimes because of their inability to understand (patients with mental illness) or resist (prisoners).
Is there any justification for this?
Were you aware of this history before reading the book?
How is the informed consent and research practice in your home country?
Do you think doctors and researchers of the past had a different basic view of people than they do today?
In your mini essay, please answer at least 3 of the above questions on the topic.
It would be a good idea to do some research online to get more information on this topic, and to add photos or links that are relevant to your blog post.
If you take information from websites, be careful and DO NOT PLAGIARIZE! Be sure to use quotations or paraphrasing of the information and always cite the source at the end of the quotation or at the end of a paraphrased paragraph.
Please title your blog post "BP #6 - Mini Essay on Informed Consent"
1. Please read the 3 articles posted below (Sustainable Restaurants, Soda Taxes, and Pizza is a Vegetable).
2. Write a mini essay (short essay but using good essay organization) arguing your opinion on one of these three topics:
A. What do you think about sustainable restaurants. Should more restaurants follow their ways? Do you think it is possible for more restaurants to use more sustainable practices? Why or why not?
B. Do you support the idea of a soda tax? Why or why not?
C. Do you agree with Congress's decisions about school lunches? Why or why not?
Please choose ONE of the following themes in HeLa and research information on them (on the Internet, in books, or in newspaper and journal articles from the 1940s and 1950s).
Medical research / cancer research in the 1940s / 1950s
Segregation in America in the 1940s / 1950s
American history (politics, economics, social factors) in the 1940s / 1950s
You should write a minimum of 2 paragraphs about the topic you choose. Please DO NOT PLAGIARIZE but use quotations or paraphrasing when you get information from other sources.
Please title your post: BP #3 - Mini Research: (your topic)
Many people think that doctors and researcherstook advantage ofHenrietta Lacks by using her cells and giving her (or her family) no compensation for them. What do you think?
Can you think of a time when someone else took advantage of you? How did you feel in that situation? Describe the situation, including:
Setting
Characters
The action/event
The consequences
Feelings and emotions
How do you think HeLa's family feels?
In answering the questions, please use a lot of good description and detail.
Here are several websites with information about Henrietta Lacks, the H. Lacks Foundation, the author of the text (Rebecca Skloot) and related research.
Please post your first blog post and introduce yourself to your classmates. Tell us how long you have been a student here, what major you will be doing, where you are from, and anything else you would like to share with us about yourself.
You will need to first create a gmail email account (gmail.com) if you do not already have one – if you do this, write down your gmail email name and your password right away so that you can find them again to log into Blogger later
You may need to input your cell phone number to verify your account and receive a verification number by text. If you do not have a cell phone that can receive text messages, please ask a friend to have it sent by text to their phone.
2. Create a blog and give it a title that has your first name in it.
Your blog’s name can be creative, just be sure you have your name in it, too (e.g., Rebekah’s Corner; Hugo’s Café; Lemondrop Mountain (Rebekah); Ari’s Super Cool Party Place)
You will also need to select your URL address – this is the address that will be at the top of the page in the URL box when you are on your page – and the address that anyone can type into the search box to go to your blog
A good URL will have your first name and something about your class (e.g., rebekah-esl-blogspot.com; hugo-art-blogspot.com) or your blog’s name (e.g., esl099-hela.blogspot.com)
If the URL you select does not work, that means someone else is already using that address for their own blog page, and you need to select a different URL name – maybe by adding numbers to your name
Write down your URL address so that you can remember it and can share it with classmates if you need to
For your privacy protection, DO NOT use your last name on the blog name or in the URL – you don’t want too much personal information available to everyone on the Internet!
3. Select a “template” (background design) for your blog and then go to the “Design” tab at the top to set up your blog page to set up your blog page.
Look at the “Header” and select “Edit” – here you can add a few sentences to the top of your blog to describe your blog and you can add a picture or image to the top of your blog. Search for a picture you like on the Internet (images.google.com) and save it to your Desktop. Then “Browse” for the picture and upload it to your blog’s header.
Go down to the side menus and go to “About Me” and select “Edit” – here you should write a few sentences about yourself in the “Description” section.
Look at the first blog posts (below the picture) and post a comment for your class section that has your blogger URL address in it
5. Set up your blog to connect to other blogs:
On the side menu, select “Add a Gadget” and add “Blog List”
After you have added “Blog List” it will be called “My Blog List” on your menu. If you are in “Design” select “Edit” and if you on your blog page (in “View Blog”) select the tools picture to edit.
When you edit your “My Blog List,” you can add other blogs to follow. Please add our class blog’s URL (http://esl099-hela.blogspot.com) to this list.
Then add the URL of each of your classmates to this list (you can copy and paste these URLs from the comments for your class on my blog)
NOW YOU ARE ALL SET UP in BLOGGER for our CLASS BLOGGING!
A few more things about using Blogger:
You can always see what your blog looks like to everyone by going to “View blog” and you can always change your blog by going to “Design”
To change your Profile (and add a photo that will appear on your blog page), you will need to “Edit Profile” and “Edit Photo” when you first log into Blogger and are on the “Dashboard” page.
In Blogger, you can have more than one blog! Just create another blog (“create a blog”) when you first log into Blogger (when you are on the “Dashboard” page).
You can easily edit your blog posts, even after you have already posted them. Just click on the little pencil icon (which means “edit”) and the post will reopen and you can change anything on it and then re-post it.
YOUR FIRST BLOG POST
Your first BLOG ASSIGNMENT will be making your first blog post.
To post a new message to your blog, go to your Blog Page (“View blog”) and at the top of the page, you can select “New Post”
Title your post “Introduction” or “Welcome” and then type up your message. At the end, you will need to click the “Publish Post” button so others can see it!
Welcome to ESL 099! During this class, you will practice your academic writing and vocabulary and you will also read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, a New York Times best seller and the common reading this year (2011-12) at LaGuardia.
This blog will be a space where you will post reader responses and short pieces of research about HeLa, in addition to some vocabulary exercises. You will need to create and maintain your own blog in order to fulfill these assignments.
