Henrietta Lacks

My father’s father died in his 60’s from cancer. My father died in his 60’s from cancer. Neither one of them smoked, I do. I wonder, what the chances are of me reaching to my 70’s? Probably not that great; but then I long ago figured that I wasn’t going to live forever. I mean who does? No one I know of for certain unless of course you think about Henrietta Lacks.

Henrietta Lacks

Henrietta Lacks, an African American, was born in 1920 as Loretta Pleasant in Roanoke Virginia. As a child she would grow up under her grandfather’s roof and marry her first cousin and then move to Maryland in her 20's

At the end of 1950 after the birth of her fifth child, she discovered unusual lumps in her groin accompanied by profuse and abnormal bleeding.  She was referred to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore where they found that she had cervical cancer. During treatment, part of Mrs. Lacks’ cervix that contained both good and cancerous cells was removed without her knowledge and sent to Dr. George Otto Gey.  However, by the end of 1951 no medical treatments had worked for Henrietta and she died only to be buried in an unmarked grave in the family cemetery in Lackstown.

Dr. Gey soon found that unlike other human cells which usually subdivide and die after few days, Mrs. Lacks’ cells could not only survive indefinitely, but they would grow. Gey was able to isolate a specific cell from the tumor which he called HeLa, after Henrietta Lacks. This cell line was then mass produced and was sent to doctors around the world for successful research in areas such as cancer, polio, AIDS, radiation poisoning, gene mapping and many other medical projects too numerous to mention.

Of course many people have made a name for themselves using the HeLa cell and no doubt many people have been saved because of it. But many people have made millions for themselves producing or using the cell while members of Henrietta’s family remained poor and in the dark about their mother’s or relative’s contribution to medical science. An error perhaps, or just benign neglect on the part of those who thought little about the source of where their material came from and more about fame and or fortune that would head their way? I don’t know.

I didn’t really know what was right or wrong when I saw "Immortal" an episode of Law & Order based on this a few years ago when I thought something like this couldn’t possibly happen in real life. I know even less now what to think now that I know that it was true. All I do know that is if her surviving children can take some solace in knowing that their loss has provided so much relief and comfort in the lives of others, including perhaps my own when I reach my 60’s, then it may have been worth it all.

This has been my meager little attempt to recognize Henrietta Lacks in this year’s Black History Month.

Brush up your Shakespeare

As Hamlet once said,

“What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how
infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and
admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like
a god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals—and yet…”

And yet I’m sick and I the romance of being a man and being on top of the evolutionary scale doesn’t thrill me at all. My nose is stuffed and my head feels heavy. My throat hurts and my chest rattles each time I cough and I feel like absolute shit. I might soon have to take some sort of medication which I’m always against since medication really doesn’t do anything for a cold except hide the symptoms. And yes, it is a cold and not “swine flu” or anything just as sexy although it might as well have been since I am so miserable.

In fact if I had a few night sweats and some chills and aching bones I would be able to justify the way that I feel, but I don’t. All I can say is, or at least ask about is what happened to those days when I was young and I could go about with snot flying about like a leaky and disgusting faucet, not giving a damn about anything and secretly hoping that mother wouldn’t make a bad situation worse by slapping on the Vicks Vapor Rub on my chest as if she anointing me so I could meet the maker. But those days are gone, now everything seems to hurt just a little bit more than it used to. I really must learn to look after myself and get more than 6 hours of sleep at night and control the eating and the drinking and the smoking thing. I think it was Bette Davis who said old age ain't for sissies. How right she was.

This was the point where I was going to put a video from Kiss Me Kate. About brushing up your Shakespeare and link it to the beginning somehow, but my mind is wandering and all I can think about is or are my school days. So if you don’t mind I'll keep the title and ask you not worry about the wrong gender thing that's coming because it has nothing to do with what you just read, but and here’s my man Sidney being sung about at the Victoria & Albert in London I think.

The Agony and the Ecstacy

You know the one good thing about being in Europe is that when it comes to beggars, it’s not going to be black people doing it, at least in general. That’s because most black people are immigrants who have left wherever they are from in search of a better life, so the desire to beg is not really on the agenda. In fact as in New York City, many unskilled immigrants will tend to sell merchandise on the streets, often without a license. I’ve noticed that was what they were doing in it Rome. Young boys who would sell faux designer hand bags and other things and were often kept on the move as they were chased by the police over their wares. The Carabinieri would drive up outside the Vatican walls where many of these sellers were and with sirens blaring, drive after the long legged boys at a terrific rate of speed scattering them in all directions. It was like a case of ”run Forrest run” but with some color.


I remember seeing a story about this on 60 minutes late last year but I didn’t take much notice at the time. Apparently the police really aren’t concerned in arresting them, but more interested in keeping them moving from one area to another. It is a sort of dance of fools.


The real beggars are the ones that you’ll find outside of the Vatican or the Rome’s Central Terminal where they got me a couple of times. These are usually gypsies that hang out at the train stations looking for handouts for food. The ones at the Vatican are the cripples and I don’t mean to be PC. I’m not talking about the disadvantaged that have a touch of carpal tunnel or irritable bowel syndrome. I’m talking about old school cripples, the ones with limbs that point in five different directions east of Sunday, the ones that make you think this must be a scene in a biblical epic just waiting for Charlton Heston to come and save the day as they lay on the sidewalks with outstretched arms crying with tears in some incomprehensible form of babble.

It’s funny though, you would think that if you were a cripple and you are at the same spot that St Peter was killed and buried, you would be able to get some sort blessing that would cure you of your ails. I mean, if you can’t get healed there by the Holy Father then you can’t get healed anywhere. Anyway, I would show pictures of those people but I thought it would have been too much of an intrusion to take pictures of people in a dire moments of their lives while I stepped over them feeling uncompelled to share a few cents with them, so here are some other pictures of the area.

Disease of the Month

So it looks like I’m not going to die, at least not today, or if it is today it won’t be from swine flu.

I was on the El in West Philly yesterday and a woman was talking to a man across the aisle from her and she declared to him loudly and thus to the rest of the car load of people, that swine flu was over and there was no longer any need for us to worry about it and that some man without a Green Card had brought it into the US and that he had been found and everything was Ok now. Thank God for bureaucracy and racists; they will explain away all the ills of the world with their inane theories.

However racism didn’t explain the hacking and sneezing and the worrying that I had gone through last week. Well I didn’t actually worry, not openly at least. It didn’t explain why I thought that everyone else who decided to cough or sneeze while not even trying to cover up figured they could to do it in my presence whether they were black or white or anything in between. Nor did it explain my burning desire to give them a swift kick in the nuts and give them a real reason to cough, but I digress. Racism also doesn’t explain why the number of infections keeps rising around the world but unless you live in Mexico, that doesn’t seem to be that big a deal by the press. Nor does it really explain the constant head pounding that I’ve been going through for the last few weeks, but we’ll go into that later.

I think that when I write the story of my life and all the trials that I have gone through, the chapters involving illnesses and near death experiences will need at least one chapter all to itself. And I’m not even talking about the hospitalizations that had as a child. The stomach thing that I had two weeks old, or the pneumonia at two years old or the appendicitis flare up at eight or the broken limbs that get as a child or even the cancer scare a few years ago when I thought to myself, “So this is how it’s going to be... where are my cigarettes?”

What I will talk about will be the time when I battled SARS or bird flu and when someone sneezed in the food court near where I worked while I was buying Chinese food and I had to run out of there for my life and well being. I've never been proud of that moment, but I can't take it back Then there was the time that the West Nile Virus was coming down from New York and each time I took a shower I would have to lotion my body and follow it with a good dose of mosquito repellent. It was last year I think when I got bit by a tick on the inside of my knee from being in the back yard or doing some shit I shouldn’t have doing in grassland somewhere. I could still see the bite marks two weeks later and I thought this was it. This time I really believed that I had Lyme’s Disease because I could feel it burrowing into my bones and destroying my nervous system soon to be followed by stroke and or renal failure. I spoke to my doctor and he laughed at me. Bitch.

It’s not that I’m a hypochondriac, but unlike some people I know that I’m going to do die. I've never heard of anyone living forever and I would like my death to be just a little later rather sooner and by something much more ordinary and less exotic than the disease of the month.

What I do have, or suffer from is Alexithymia, but that’s more of a psychological thing though that's not even recognized by some and it affects me physically. One day I may go into it but not today. Oh and the headaches, well I started getting those when Natasha Richardson died from her skiing accident. Although since I don’t remember skiing since I was eleven and I don’t recall hitting my head more than usual on something, so I don't think it's a build up of blood from a leaky brain. I’ll just put it down to allergies, they seem to get worse and worse as I get older. Who was it that said “old age ain’t for sissies?” They certainly knew what they were talking about.

Zimbabwe Redux

I've never been to Africa. I think I have always wanted to go because growing up watching Tarzan on TV with Ron Ely screaming and swinging from some big vine in the middle of the jungle made it so appealing... Keep your jokes to yourself.

Actually, I believe there is very little jungle in Africa, it's mostly savanna in the middle except for the Congo and desert in the north and parts of the south. In fact TV's Africa looked more like India. I think most of the continent looks more like the King Solomon's Mines Africa with Stewart Granger. But the fantasy is still there, plus I have the subconcious pull of going back to the homeland. You know they say that everyone is originally from Africa, black, white and everything in between, so I have a longing just to be there.

Since I don't have the type of job that would send me to any part of Africa on business or anything else, I would have to go under my own steam and with my own resources. That would probably mean that I wouldn't be able to do the climb up Mount Kilimanjaro, or the 4 week safari on the Serengeti with native bearers and Deborah Kerr or Meryl Streep holding on to my arm for protection against wild game. No, it would probably be the trip where I would probably be caught in the middle of some sort of blood diamond conflict, or a revolution where because I am so dark I would be mistaken as a member of tribe and with my luck the wrong tribe at that.

Maybe even worse than that would be to be struck down by disease in some shit hole of a town that my local travel agent recommended only because they were grateful for a commision. Malaria would be the obvious one I think to send me shivering in the middle of the night, completely delerious and out of my mind to meet the maker, but now they say that cholera seems to be breaking out and spreading from Zimbabwe. Apparently close to 1000 people have died from the disease since their last general election and there are are many more people who are infected with limited opportunities of receiving adequate healthcare. There are also signs that the disease is spreading into the neighboring countries. Thus Zimbabwe is again becoming another threat to the stabalization of the region.

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Cholera, who the hell dies from cholera these days?

I have tickets for Paris next week, but for personal reasons and mistakes that I've made in my thought patterns I don't think that I will be able to make it. So Europe and Africa are out for me right now and I definitely can't afford Asia, so I am left once again with staying home this holiday season, going back to Florida or having thoughts of Hoboken NJ. Don't ask.

As usual, I can't make my mind up.

Foot & Mouth Disease

I don’t know where the putting the foot in the mouth phrase came from, but it’s been one of those phrases that I have been aware of for quite some time. I am sure that I heard it being used before, but the first time I remember hearing it being used effectively was the Democratic convention in ’88. God, how the hell old am I?

Governor Ann Richards of Texas was giving the key note address, or the opening speech or some speech and she mentioned George Bush senior who was running for president and that she was the one with the real Texas twang in her voice and not him. She then went on to comment on the Vice-President’s newly found interest in social issues. "Poor George. He can’t help it. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth," she said with a shrill in her voice that brought the audience to its feet.

I guess she never thought then that George Jr would come by later on take her job for insulting his daddy. I guess she never thought then that politicians would still be putting their feet in the mouths and still keep getting away with it, ala Clinton, McCain, Kilpatrick and countless others.

But politicians are not the only ones who seem to suffer from foot and mouth disease. Like a lot of people, I have been known to say the most inappropriate things at the most inopportune times. Most times it’s because I didn’t think the thing through and there was a lack of judgment on my part. I will often have to take it back and apologize, or rephrase what it was that I should have said. There are other times when I will just take a cavalier attitude, stick my chest out and let the cards fall where they may. Neither position is a comfortable place to be in.

In fact the only time that I like to have a foot in my mouth is when it’s someone else’s. Well actually I haven’t got to that foot fetish stage yet, just toe tickling testicles and nipple squeezing action but who knows what tomorrow brings. I hear music. I’m drifting…

So, in conclusion, for those people for whom which the fate of the nation or state rests on their shoulders; please think about what you are going to say before you open up. My plea is for Hillary, you know you’re my girl, but your black supporters, all 3 of us want you to stop reinventing memories that don’t exist and stop talking about other peoples’ churches. My request is for McCain to get your facts straight and take your medication before you talk us into a 3rd war front in the Middle East. And if I hear one more personal thing coming from Governor Paterson in New York, I swear I’ll… (Open mouth insert foot here.)

Sex, Children & Politics

Sex and the politician has always been a big story. The latest being the governor of New York and his 4 or 5 thousand dollar hooker and the earliest, well you would have to go a lot further back than Bubba from Arkansas, JFK and FDR. Even President Mckinley and his out of wedlock child would be too recent to qualify as the earliest political sexual escapades in the US. No, the earliest scandal would have to be dropped at the door steps of the founding of the country by Jefferson and his slave child concubine Sally Hemings. These are the types of legends that people have and will write stories about. They are the type of narratives that film companies will make TV shows and movies to satisfy the public’s need for gossip and tales of shame.

Unfortunately, the scandal that will not be written about or filmed will be the results of the report handed out yesterday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on 838 girls ranging from 14 to 19 years of age on sexually transmitted disease (STD)

As quoted from the BBC News, “The CDC says the study is the first in its kind to examine the prevalence of common sexually transmitted diseases among adolescent girls.

It found that nearly half of the African-American girls surveyed had at least one STD, while the rate was 20% among white and Mexican-American teenagers…

The CDC's Devin Fenton said it was a serious issue because the diseases could lead to infertility and cervical cancer. “ - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7290088.stm

The news article did not mention teenage pregnancies or rise in HIV/Aids in our youth. It did not say how the CDC got its sample or even if the sample was a true reflection of the greater population. But if it is then the question should be, why is prevalence of STDs twice as much in the black group than any other and what needs to be done to shorten the gap?

Are African Americans more promiscuous than others? Are they just not good at choosing a healthy partner or partners to be intimate with? Are black people less likely to care for themselves than whites or any other race?

I think it would be short-sighted to say yes to any of those questions, but I also think it would be almost criminal to say no and let things stay as they are. Young people, especially girls need to be taught that sometimes there are disadvantages to having sex when you are not prepared for it. The pill, or an Intrauterine Device (IUD), or the rhythm method may or may not prevent pregnancies but they definitely won’t prevent viruses from being transmitted from one person to another. Abstinence is fine, but if that were happening we would not be in the position that we are in now.

If young people are not going to be taught at home then someone else must tell them that if they are going to engage in sexual activities, they must protect themselves by using a condom. If they are unable to afford the purchase of a condom, then the schools should be forced to provide them without question or embarrassment to the children if the parents won’t.

There will be an argument that schools are not in the business of promoting sex amongst the students, or the other one is who should pay for it. But the way I see it, we have already proven that children are having sex and the money spent trying to cure them of disease or burying them, will be far more than cost of some rubber.

The true sex scandal is that there are few politicians who have the balls or the tits to stand up and see what is going on and even fewer who are willing to try and protect our young.