I got Lasik a few days ago. No particular reason. My eyes had stopped changing so dramatically and the idea of zapping your eye so you don’t need glasses EVER AGAIN was appealing to me, as an eighteen-year-old. But the surgery was so new, I imagined of Jack Napier’s transformation in a back alley. Now I’m thirty-three, and it seems like the procedure’s had the bugs hammered out, even for someone with my dense prescription (I couldn’t even get the cool glasses that don’ have frames, just ear holders glued to the lenses). So in November I went through exam after exam after exam, just about all of them some…
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The Books I Read: March – April 2012
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot A non-fiction book that’s basically two different narratives. One is about a breed of cervical cancer cells sampled that are able to thrive in culture — which has been a tremendous boon to scientists. With a constant supply of unchanging cells, research has opened for developing commercial drugs, IVF, and vaccines. This part also brings up issues of medical ethics and who owns your cells. Because the other part is about Henrietta Lacks, the person from whom those cells were “donated”. Also her family, and the author’s journey to find out about her. Henrietta Lacks died shortly after her cells were…
