Sex and Death
The awful existential significance of cellular suicide.

One of the three scientists who shared yesterday's Nobel Prize was honored for identifying a death gene that may control cellular suicide in humans. What if this gene could somehow be switched off? Mightn't that be a first step toward bodily immortality? In fact, this seems to be precisely how a certain rather creepy form of immortality was conferred on one Henrietta Lacks of Baltimore. In 1951, Lacks, a mother of four then just entering her 30s, was admitted to Johns Hopkins Hospital with cervical cancer. A piece of her tumor was removed and, as it happens, passed on by the pathologist to a researcher who was trying to grow human tissue in vitro. [read more]

thanks to DANGEROUSMETA!

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Henrietta's Dance

Not long before her death, Henrietta Lacks danced. As the film rolled, her long thin face teased the camera, flashing a seductive grin as she moved, her eyes locked on the lens. She tilted her head back and raised her hands, waving them softly in the air before letting them fall to smooth her curlers. Then the film went blank. [read more]