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Phineas Gage And Henrietta Lacks Loss Of Sacrifice For Exploration

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Phineas Gage, Douglas Mawson, and Henrietta Lacks have devoted themselves to science and pushing human knowledge whether they wanted to or not. Sadly, these three suffered their fair share of hardships during their sacrifice for the future of modern knowledge. Phineas Gage had what one might say “a gruesome turn of events” as an explosive went off, sending a metal rod through the side of his head causing massive damage to the frontal lobe of his brain. Douglas Mawson was on a journey through Antarctica for exploration purposes, causing the long trip back to the ship which happened to be their escape route. Douglas’s two friends that went along on the expedition had been taken by harsh weather and circumstances caused by the Arctic back to …show more content…

To begin, Mawson was exploring with his expedition team, when both met harsh deaths whilst exploring the outer edges of Antarctica. Ninnis, a member of the three man team, was found dead in one of the crevasses that lay before them in the icy wasteland. The other member Mertz, basically went crazy until he could no longer function as he was supposed to and later died. Mawson had struggled trying to help his friend get across the icy wasteland, before literally losing the soles of his feet. He made the trip to another expedition so that they could get on the ship that was their only trip home. Douglas faced brutal physical trials of strength and will, and managed to come out on top. Douglas lost his friends and suffered through all of the pain in his way, due to the harsh environment and pain of loss that he had to live with all his …show more content…

Lacks, was a woman who had her life taken by cancer. However doctors and scientists began to notice that her cells continuously produce (to this day in fact). Henrietta’s family was not informed about her “immortal cells” until 20 years after her death. To all readers disappointment, her family didn’t even get a portion, or even a small percent of the money earned from using her cell line to make various medical advances. These include the polio vaccine, the cancer drug tamoxifen, chemotherapy, gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, and treatments for influenza, leukemia, and Parkinson’s disease (from article). Although Henrietta died, the adversity was not really faced by her, but by her family in not knowing about the cell line (HeLa) until 20 years later, which is why she just didn’t suffer as much as Gage or Mawson in terms of lifelong pain after

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