A Jail "Cell" Isn't The Only One Blacks Are Familiar With

First, it was the real Lone Ranger, and now here's the real Wonder Woman.

And this is becoming a totally different blog after these fools got my racial dander up:

"More than half a century ago, doctors took Henrietta Lacks' tissue and used it for research without her permission, creating the first immortal line of cells and making possible billions of dollars in medical research. Now, 62 years later, the National Institutes of Health has struck an agreement with the Lacks family that will allow for continued research while seeking to protect their medical privacy. 

Henrietta Lacks, a poor African American woman, died in 1951 after battling cervical cancer at age 31, leaving behind five children. Before her death, researchers at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore sampled her cells during a biopsy without her consent -- there were no federal regulations requiring patient consent at the time. 

That sample produced a line of cancer cells that kept growing and reproducing, making them ideal for scientific study. The HeLa cells (an abbreviation of Lacks’ name) ultimately became the most widely used human cell line in the world. Some 74,000 publications refer to HeLa cells, NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins said at a news conference Wednesday. 

The family was not asked for permission to use the cells. It was only in 1971, with the publication of a study in the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology, that Lacks’ identity was revealed. A 1997 BBC documentary shed further light on Lacks’ story and the 2010 bestseller "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot helped draw into the public eye the ethical issues involved in using HeLa cells. (That book is being made into a film produced by Oprah Winfrey’s company.)"

 Stealing black bodies, stealing black lives - even stealing black cells:

Sheeeiit, considering how valuable blacks have been - to every single layer of this entire American enterprise - instead of NewAge whites demanding blacks be "humble," they should've been throwing us a PRIDE parade long before they hopped on the gay bandwagon,...

 

Nothing That Big Moves This Fast Either

Los Angeles: in motion from Michael Marantz on Vimeo.

This video claims it's featuring Los Angeles, but is really just the places tourists go (Venice, Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Downtown) with not one scene of South Central, Inglewood, East L.A., The Valley, Pasadena, Compton, Watts, Torrance, or anywhere else I think of as "home".

Oh well, it still made me a little homesick. I love L.A..

Hat Tip: Little Green Footballs

UPDATE: The great Joseph Nigro (whose contributions to this blog are terribly missed) sent me these two reminders, above and below, of what the "real L.A." experience is like - Man, I got so good at avoiding bullets that, at times, I felt like I was Wonder Woman with those fucking bracelets! - and, yet, I still miss it. Sigh. I'll get back there again, one day. I can hardly wait:

Add Angelina Jolie To The List Of Nutty Women

"You could be forgiven for muddling top London acupuncturist and celebrity facialist Linda Carter with her near-namesake Lynda Carter, TV's Wonder Woman back in the '70s. Linda certainly knows how to work wonders, which is why many top celebrities, including Angelina Jolie and Julianne Moore, have called upon her services."

-- Heaven VIP

"She started to cut herself; later commenting, 'I collected knives and always had certain things around. For some reason, the ritual of having cut myself and feeling the pain, maybe feeling alive, feeling some kind of release, it was somehow therapeutic to me.'

-- Angelina Jolie on Wikipedia.

Her father, the actor John Voight - who she doesn't speak with - says she has "serious emotional problems," which TMR doesn't doubt. Someone who met Brad Pitt once described him to TMR as "not the sharpest knife in the drawer," which is probably the only kind of man Jolie can handle, considering how he follows her every move when she's already been through two marriages - including one to actor Billy Bob Thornton.