Diagnostic
I want to talk about a shopping mall named Queens Center Mall next to the 295 highway in Queens. It is constructed of diverse stores and a food court in a four-floor building. People who live near the area usually like to go there in their free time.
There are many kinds of stores such as clothes, shoes, cosmetic, jewelry, and electronic product, in which you could observe a salesman introducing the new lipstick arrival to a beautiful woman. As Robert Kohls states about equality of American values,most Americans believe that men and women should be treated the same, especially at work. People can do any work they are interested in and this is accepted by everyone.
Otherwise, every time I go there, there are usually a lot of people who are enjoying their shopping time with family or friends and carrying many shopping bags. American people like to change old things to new ones, especially in Apple Store, which is the favorite place in the U.S.A .People prefer to have the latest cell phone and Ipad in homes, which could increase their confidence in front of friends and workmates. In fact, the garbage is not the real garbage in the U.S.A, because some items thrown in the garbage are still almost new.
Finally, you could discover that people prefer to wear comfortable
clothes with a pair of sneakers whether you are male or female in the mall. Most women do not like to wear fashionable shoes during shopping. Americans are generally informal. Even in some business, Americans dress in informal clothes.
2/21/2013
Diagnostic
Henrietta Lacks was a poor black tobacco farmer who grew up in a home-house in Clover, and finally moved to Turner Station - a steel city with her family as workers with tough and low paying work which white men wouldn't touch. She and her family needed to feed their children and live with unfair racial discrimination.
Through this difficulty, their children and family were also her great strengths. First, Henrietta loved her children. Even malignant cancer couldn't stop her from being pregnant with her fifth child Joseph. She was afraid a doctor would take her womb and make her stop having children. So she didn't talk about things like cancer to everyone at the beginning. Second, she loved her husband Day, whom her sister Gladys and her cousin Crazy Joe once tried to stop the marriage with. When Henrietta went to the Hopkins Hospital to take the cancer treatments, she just told her husband Day and the children not to worry. She simply went on with her day as if nothing had happened. She loved people and life with her family. This was the strength that came from her family.
During the last eight months between her diagnosis and death, no one in Turner Station except her husband Day, and her cousins Margret and Sadie knew Henrietta was sick. She always smiled, and always took care of her family. Even after she got sick, she never was a person who said ' I feel bad and I'm going to take it out on you '. She was a nice and optimistic black woman, so she could keep quiet to death.
As her cousin Sadie said,” Henrietta just love people, she was a people that could really make the good things come out of you” and ” Hennie made life come alive---bein with her was like bein with fun”. I could imagine Henrietta was playing slow music song and dancing with her cousins and friends. Henrietta was a popular person. She liked to help people who first came to Baltimore from the country and anytime whose money ran low. Sometimes she even helped them find good wives and girlfriends. She was also a respected person. Laure Aurelian, who was Gey’s colleague at Hopkins, recalled,” Gey told Henrietta her cells would help save the lives of countless people, and she smiled. She told him she was glad her pain would come to some good for someone”. She didn't require any benefits because of her immortal cells. Even though she was a poor black woman and didn't know science in that period. In my opinion, Henrietta was a great black woman in the history of science. Her immortal cells contributed greatly to scientific progress.
3/4/2013
“Speech is silver, and silence is golden” is a German proverb which teaches us an important lesson. Of course, gold is more valuable than silver, and so is silence to speech in controversial situations. Firstly, too much explanation usually makes you receive the worse results. When you face lots of unreasonable complaints and requirements from customers, what would you do? If I were you, I would keep my mouth closed, and open my ears. That is enough. In addition, keeping silent represents respect to someone else. I have an impressive memory when I was a teenager. One day, I dropped my wallet beside the grocery when I was buying a candy, and then I wanted to pick it up. An elder suddenly asked me, what would you do after picking up the wallet? Then she spoke a lot about cultures and the ethics that we studied every day. After she finished her long presentation, I told her it was mine and I had dropped it one minute before. I smiled and so did she. Over all, keeping silent is not a bad thing. In some cases, it can add value to your words.
3/18/2013
Human Guinea Pigs
Last Friday, I attended a presentation named “Human Guinea Pigs: Involuntary Medical Experimentation- A Global Perspective” from 11:00 am to 1:00 pm in KHRC&A –Gallery Lecture Room, which was presented by a guest speaker: Beth Lilach who is senior director of Education & Community Affairs in Holocaust Memorial& Tolerance Center. I learned a lot about Human Guinea Pigs as shown in the following three questions.
First of all, what is a Human Guinea Pig? Miss Lilach stated that it was involuntary medical experimentation which had been considered unethical, and was often performed illegally, without the knowledge, consent, or informed consent of the patient. She also said that most involuntary medical experiments were conducted on people of color, poor people, women, children and prisoners. The human research programs were usually highly secretive, and in many cases, information about them was not released until many years after the studies had been performed. For example, from 1932 to 1972, in the infamous Tuskegee syphilis study, 200 black men diagnosed with syphilis were never told of their illness, and were denied treatment. They were used as human guinea pigs in order to follow the progression and symptoms of the disease. They all subsequently died from syphilis, but their families were never told that they could have been treated.
Next, who conducted the human medical experiments? According to the presentation, funding for many of the experiments was provided by the United States government, especially the Central Intelligence Agency,United States military and federal or military corporations. There have been many reports of governments using their citizens, without their knowledge or permission, in human Guinea pig experiments in their never ending efforts to keep ahead in the arms race. For instance, in 1966, toxin & bacteria were released in the New York subway system by U.S army and CIA. Most residents did not know what had happened to them. They just knew they were sick and need see the doctor.
Finally, why were human guinea pigs so prevalent?There were three good reasons that governments and businesses are interested in human medical experiments. The first one is the advancement of knowledge. The second one is the opportunity to help future generations. Many scientists are so ambitious that they could catch any opportunities to receive success in their researching areas. The last one is humongous commercial profits. An economic report Miss Lilach showed us predicted that North America would sell 317million dollars of pharmaceuticals, which would grow by 15% in
2015. These are exciting statistics that would appeal to any commercial organization’s attentions.
Overall, I was pretty shocked by human guinea pigs. The immoral human medical experiments still exist in societies, even those which are called civilized societies. However, nowadays we have rights to fight against human guinea pigs, and call for more and more people to require our government to control the human subject research. We should take responsibilities for what we think is right.
Last Friday, I attended a presentation named “Human Guinea Pigs: Involuntary Medical Experimentation- A Global Perspective” from 11:00 am to 1:00 pm in KHRC&A –Gallery Lecture Room, which was presented by a guest speaker: Beth Lilach who is senior director of Education & Community Affairs in Holocaust Memorial& Tolerance Center. I learned a lot about Human Guinea Pigs as shown in the following three questions.
First of all, what is a Human Guinea Pig? Miss Lilach stated that it was involuntary medical experimentation which had been considered unethical, and was often performed illegally, without the knowledge, consent, or informed consent of the patient. She also said that most involuntary medical experiments were conducted on people of color, poor people, women, children and prisoners. The human research programs were usually highly secretive, and in many cases, information about them was not released until many years after the studies had been performed. For example, from 1932 to 1972, in the infamous Tuskegee syphilis study, 200 black men diagnosed with syphilis were never told of their illness, and were denied treatment. They were used as human guinea pigs in order to follow the progression and symptoms of the disease. They all subsequently died from syphilis, but their families were never told that they could have been treated.
Next, who conducted the human medical experiments? According to the presentation, funding for many of the experiments was provided by the United States government, especially the Central Intelligence Agency,United States military and federal or military corporations. There have been many reports of governments using their citizens, without their knowledge or permission, in human Guinea pig experiments in their never ending efforts to keep ahead in the arms race. For instance, in 1966, toxin & bacteria were released in the New York subway system by U.S army and CIA. Most residents did not know what had happened to them. They just knew they were sick and need see the doctor.
Finally, why were human guinea pigs so prevalent?There were three good reasons that governments and businesses are interested in human medical experiments. The first one is the advancement of knowledge. The second one is the opportunity to help future generations. Many scientists are so ambitious that they could catch any opportunities to receive success in their researching areas. The last one is humongous commercial profits. An economic report Miss Lilach showed us predicted that North America would sell 317million dollars of pharmaceuticals, which would grow by 15% in
2015. These are exciting statistics that would appeal to any commercial organization’s attentions.
Overall, I was pretty shocked by human guinea pigs. The immoral human medical experiments still exist in societies, even those which are called civilized societies. However, nowadays we have rights to fight against human guinea pigs, and call for more and more people to require our government to control the human subject research. We should take responsibilities for what we think is right.