9/25/12
Location: Clary Theater,
Student Success Center
Time: 5:00 P.M.
I attended this activity on September 25th
after getting an E-mail persuading me to attend. After reading this book by
Rebecca Skloot over the summer, my curiosity was piqued and I was anxious to
attend this seminar by this woman who I didn’t know. The only background
information that I knew about this woman was that she was an English professor
from Duke and that she too was an author. I also knew that the event was hosted
by Dean Stephanie Ray and the Office of Diversity Programs, so I knew that it
would be worthwhile. At the beginning of Dr. Holloway’s lecture she talked
about her book, “Private Bodies, Public Texts”, and other narratives. She asked
very powerful and rhetorical questions that kept me interested. She brought up
many topics such as the controversial story in the news about the vegetative
wife and whether having her plug pulled was ethical and the political unrest in
Libya. She just talks about various forms of literature in her intro including,
the Maury Povich show, the Jerry Springer show, and the real housewives of
Atlanta to criticize the portrayal of
women in these narratives and real world examples. She is very concerned about
women’s rights topics such as contraception and abortion. She brings up these
women’s issues to lead into the topic of ethical inequity with regards to
Henrietta Lacks. She acknowledges how the story of Henrietta Lacks can be told
about herself and the spectacle created as well as the impact on her family. A
big theme she speaks about is vulnerability and the effects of people’s natural
and societal characteristics on the theme. She speaks a little extensively on the
Tuskegee medical issues in the past and medicine as well as hurricane Katrina
and other topics effecting predominately African-American demographics. One
technique that Holloway uses is that she places the author of “The Immortal
Life”, Rebecca Skloot, under a figurative microscope, and calls the pursuit of
the Lacks family in general by the medical community, unethical. She is
intrigued by the story and calls the story itself a hijacking or a
“bamboozling” because the book makes more prevalent the exposure and
blackmailing of the information and the family narrative itself. She brings up
the question of “What is Ethical?” and the invasion of privacy by sources such
as the news. She mentions that the book may have many ethical violations but
doesn’t force any issues. In her opinion this book violated private bodies and
she believes that privacy is being lost. She brings up a point that the
majority of exploitation and violation of privacy happens to women and
minorities, as supposed to white heterosexual men. She believes that many of
the facets of the book released information with social stigmas that didn’t
need to be released. She poses the question why did we need to know this touchy
and extra specific information. She believes this exploitation was too much.
She criticizes the information that exposed scientific illiteracy and how the
book gives us bad impressions of characters especially Henrietta’s daughter
Deborah. She talked about many more topics but these were just a few key aspects
of the presentation that stood out to me. I enjoyed this lecture and it made me
think deeper about the Henrietta Lacks book.
