mkomtangi's blog

For the Endospore Formation Lab, I hypothesized that the endospores observed under the phase contrast microscope would have fewer colonies and less variety after pasteurization. These results are expected because endospores can withstand excessive heat, giving them a competitive advantage over bacteria that can hardly form endospores, thus killing the vegetative cells. As the formation of a rich nutrient environment will allow bacteria to grow, once the process of pasteurization occurs the bacteria that have not formed endospores will die and the bacteria that have formed endospores will prosper.

The Tuskegee syphilis study was conducted in 1932 and involved 600 black men, 399 who contracted syphilis and 201 who did not have the disease, they were persuaded to participate in the study by the Public Health Service who provide free meals and medical examinations for participants as they were testing for “bad blood”. However this was not true at all, there were no medical services provided to the men who participated in the experiment and hundreds died slow and painful deaths even after penicillin was discovered to be the best treatment for syphilis, none of the men were ever offered the one drug that could have saved their lives.

HeLa cells were stolen from Henrietta Lacks without her knowledge of full consent, while she was in John Hopkins hospital seeking radium treatment for her cervical cancer, scientist George Gey sought the opportunity, while Henrietta was unconscious during surgery, to have a surgeon collect her cancerous tissue cells to be used for his research on growing a human immortal cell line. To Gey’s astonishment the cells grew perfectly and survived longer than any of the cells he had cultured before, and the rest is scientific history. Yet what science seems to forget is the woman behind the cells and how unethical scientific research was during the 1950’s to the early 1990’s. During that forty year time span many critical and obstructive research occurred all over the United States and possibly all over the world with no laws or pre-dispositions to help regulate the safety and prosperity of the subjects and/or victims of these various scientific research experiments, some of who did not even know they were being used for research purposes such as Henrietta Lacks herself or even her family.

HeLa cells were stolen from Henrietta Lacks without her knowledge or full consent, while she was in John Hopkins hospital seeking radium treatment for her cervical cancer, scientist George Gey sought the opportunity, while Henrietta was unconscious during surgery, to have a surgeon collect her cancerous tissue cells to be used for his research on growing a human immortal cell line. To Gey’s astonishment the cells grew perfectly and survived longer than any of the cells he had cultured before, and the rest is scientific history. Yet what science seems to forget is the woman behind the cells and how unethical scientific research was during the 1950’s to the early 1990’s. During that forty year time span many critical and obstructive research occurred all over the United States and possibly all over the world with no laws or pre-dispositions to help regulate the safety and prosperity of the subjects.

Henrietta Lacks was a thirty-one year old African-American woman who died of complications due to cervical cancer and the treatment she received. Not too many people know of her story or even her name, but in the science community she is best known as HeLa, the immortal cell line. HeLa cells were the first ever human immortal cell line to divide infinitely, it has been used in many medical advancements and achievements such as; helping to develop drugs to treat herpes, leukemia, influenza, hemophilia, and Parkinson’s disease and the cells have been used to study sexually transmitted diseases, gene mapping and sequencing, somatic cell fusion, and cloning. HeLa cells are still being used till this very day all over the world as the cells are still dividing effortlessly.

The next step towards alleviating, or attempting to alleviate the controversy of embryonic stem cell research is to communicate much more strongly the steps toward developing the research; from obtaining the embryos, how the testing is implemented, and what occurs after. Evidently the opinions of morality and ethics towards embryonic stem cell research will not change rapidly or even at all, but if there is a better understanding of what is being down then there will be less opposition towards furthering research and study. This new form of communication could occur more through public talks, books, web blogs, journals, brochures, and through social media. Progress can be made in medical world with embryonic stem cell research, while still respecting various opinions and ideals. Communication is key.

All through the controversy and misunderstanding, scientists still fight for the consensus of embryonic stem cell research. Political action has also been taken towards stem cell research as policies have been put in place to limit research. Basic requirements such as informed consent on obtaining embryos for research have been added to help respect the diverse views on the topic. The procedure for obtaining the embryos has come under backlash as the early embryo has to be destroyed in stem cell research, this infuriates those who are against the research. However the embryos used for the research are often donated from in-vitro fertilization clinics, mostly from failed implantations or from excess embryos that would have been eventually destroyed due to overstock. These lines or limitations on the embryonic stem cell research have been ordered under both the Bush administration and recently under the Obama administration.

Over thirty years ago the idea of stem-cell research was introduced to the scientific world, now thirty years later the research and the technology for stem cells has advanced tremendously. Stem cells have the amazing potential ability to develop into many different stem cells in the body, and due to its regenerative abilities stem cell research offers promises of disease treatment for diseases such as diabetes, spinal cord injury, Parkinson’s disease, and heart disease. However the true potential for stem cell research has not been fully reached, as obstacles regarding ethical permissibility, moral rights, and political justice have introduced controversy to the topic.

Over thirty years ago the idea of stem-cell research was introduced to the scientific world, now thirty years later the research and the technology for stem cells has advanced tremendously. Stem cells have the amazing potential ability to develop into many different stem cells in the body, and due to its regenerative abilities stem cell research offers promises of disease treatment for diseases such as diabetes, spinal cord injury, Parkinson’s disease, and heart disease.

Last spring semester I took ResEcon 212, which was a statistics class based on social sciences. The class was a team-based learning format and involved a huge project that would analyze the statistical data of a real-life problem, my group chose to measure the food wages within fast food employers and the amount of money spent. Throughout the course I learned about z-tables, mean, median, mode, correlational graphs, and how to use Microsoft excel to input statistical data.