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James D. Watson's The Double Helix

963 Words4 Pages

In the year 1968, James D. Watson published The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure in DNA fours years after winning the Nobel Prize alongside Francis Crick and Maurice Wilson. Watson provides an account of both of these figures in his text, but he also introduces another figure who remained hidden in light of Watson, Crick, and Wilson’s fame. This hidden figure was Rosalind Franklin whose story would be known as one of the greatest cases of injustice and sexism within the scientific community. It was Franklin’s work on DNA, specifically her crystal clear x-ray diffraction image of DNA labeled “photo 51,” that lead to the discovery of the structure of DNA and would be taken from her without any recognition. Almost …show more content…

Rather than focusing on her mind as he does with Francis Crick, he is fixated with her appearance and lack of femininity. According to Watson, “By choice she did not emphasize her feminine qualities. Though her features were strong she was not unattractive and might have been quite stunning had she taken even a mild interest in clothes (Watson, 1998).” In the paragraph previous to the one where he goes into elaborate detail on her appearance, he professes that she is a highly skilled crystallographer that is capable of conducting expert scientific research. However, using the sarcastic nickname of Rosy, he states that she created more problems in the Wilkins lab because “she claimed that she had been given DNA for her own problem and would not think of herself as Maurice’s assistant (Watson, 1998).” In his villainous characterization of Franklin, he makes the claim that because she would not submit to Wilkins “Rosy had to go or be put in her place (Watson, 1998).” Although Watson does not explicitly say this, his written work implies that Franklin was a woman who asserted dominance. In comparison to Francis Crick who Watson praises for his characterization as a dominant figure, Franklin is harshly criticized for her dominance based on her gender and femininity. Being assertive as a woman is something that deviates from the gender societal stereotype that women are supposed be submissive beings and Watson is fixated on this. The woman who ardently researched DNA and discovered the structure of DNA through her skills as an accomplished crystallographer was reduced by Watson to nothing more than a feminist who could not keep her emotions under control and was better suited in “another person’s lab (Watson,

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1243 Words | 5 Pages

In an interview with Debra DeBruin, Ph.D., director of the University of Minnesota Center for Bioethics, journalist Erin McHenry questioned her about the ethical issues with the Lack’s HeLa cell case. The family never understand what all was going on. They were never told any information about what their family member was truly going through, they just knew about the cancer, completely uniformed about the HeLa cell discovery. The information on the cells was out of reach to the Lack family. It wasn’t until 2013 that the Lack’s family received some reimbursement for the Henrietta’s contribution to science when a European Molecular Biology Laboratory sequenced and published Henrietta’s genome without family

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Although Benjamin Franklin was well known as an inventor, a Post Master General, and “One of the Founding Fathers of the United States”, he was also known for being a leading author of his time. Among all his works of writing, “The Speech of Miss Polly Baker” caught my attention immediately due to the content of his writing. Even though the exact date it was written is unknown (but most likely in 1746), it was first published in The General Advertiser, on April 15, 1747, pseudonymously. It tells of a woman being on trial for having her fifth child out of wedlock, even though she has been punished for it previously. Throughout the speech she justifies her actions by telling the court that she alone could not make a baby, but yet she is the

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Speech Of Polly Baker

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Franklin wrote a speech "The Speech of Polly Baker", this speech uses many syllogisms. The speech is about a women named Polly Baker who is arguing a case in court, she is being charged five times for having children without being married. Polly Baker questions why she is being charged for that and why that law even exists. Polly states "This may be agreeable to the Laws, and I don't dispute it; but since Laws are sometimes unreasonable in themselves, and therefore repealed, and others bear too hard on the Subject in particular severe with regard to me, who have always lived in an inoffensive Life in the Neighborhood where I was born...(921). She thinks this law is very unreasonable and she states that she is a good women and she shouldn't

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Since the 2010 release of Rebecca Skloot’s New York Times bestselling non-fiction book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, many people both in and outside the scientific community are at least aware of the story of Henrietta Lacks and HeLa cells . The almost-mythical tale of the immortal HeLa cell line, taken from Henrietta Lacks’s cancer-ridden cervix and grown in culture for more than sixty years now, has evolved and spread throughout the scientific and popular imaginary , surfacing in accounts of the miraculous power and possibility of scientific research and debates surrounding medical ethics . While HeLa was used to develop the polio vaccine, continues to be of use in the research of AIDS, leukemia, Parkinson’s disease, and a host of other medical conditions, and even sent up in the first space missions to test the conditions of human cells in zero gravity, the cell line also carries with it the history of the woman in whom it originated, the history of slavery and racism in America, and the entanglement of race, gender, class, and sexuality in the sciences.

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Her cells have been used to cure countless diseases, test human immunity, understand the effect of certain drugs and radiation on people, test weapons, and so on. Her family knew of her death, but were unaware that her cells were still alive years after her death, and they have never compensated for the profits of the million dollar industry the cells have generated. They spent their childhoods verbally, sexually, and physically abused and their adult lives in and out of prison or plagued by inherited bad health. Her children couldn’t even afford the health insurance to care for diseases their mother’s cells have helped to cure. Until this book was published, no one was aware of who this woman was despite her tremendous, (yet unintended) contribution to

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Robertson Davies, a Canadian novelist, once wrote, “The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.” We have the power to decipher between the images before us and convince ourselves that what we are seeing is truly what we make it out to be. In Rebecca Skloot’s novel, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Skloot tells the story of a woman named Henrietta Lacks with immortal cells. Henrietta’s cells were used for science and stirred up turbulent debates between scientists, doctors, politicians, civilians, and others. The ethical backing to the research and testing done with HeLa cells, the abbreviation for Henrietta’s immortal cells, was, and in some ways still is, the main topic concerning Henrietta’s cells.

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Miss Polly Baker Speech Analysis

508 Words | 3 Pages

Benjamin Franklin uses humor in his speech in order to criticize society at the time. Polly Baker has 5 children out of wedlock in this story. This is a completely ridiculous idea for the time as it was considered a crime and a sin. In addition she has received numerous punishments, corporal and monetary in nature. In the speech Miss Baker laments to the court about how heavily she has been punished while those that fathered the children were not.

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Scientific Revolution Dbq

562 Words | 3 Pages

During this time women were viewed as less than men, anything that women would do would be overlooked. Margaret Cavendish wrote, “ For though the muses, graces, and sciences, are all of the female gender, ...they would turn all from females into males, so great is grown the self-conceit of the masculine and the disregard of the female sex.” (Doc 9). Male scientist were considered to be more important and would be considered correct, contrary women who were educated and conducted scientific experiments would be disregarded along with their work. Henry Oldenbury further proves this when he says that, “ Friendship among men is a great aid to the investigation and elucidation of the truth.”(doc

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934 Words | 4 Pages

Rebecca Skloot, the writer of The Immortal life of Henrietta Lacks, brings to light many unjust acts committed by those in the scientific and medical field. Skloot reveals that many lay victim to scientists, one of which is Henrietta Lacks. The book is written about one woman, Henrietta, who changed the field of science but did so without her knowledge. Skloot does well to acknowledge these topics through her use of imagery. Through Skloot’s use of imagery she was able to show the many injustices enacted by our scientific community.

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1890 Words | 8 Pages

This book is a well-researched non – fiction, history, science and feminism based biography that talks of the phenomenal true story of 3 black female - Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Johnson- mathematicians at NASA. It unleashes how their calculations and brilliance helped fuel and shape mankind’s greatest achievements in the space race. As well astronomically talented female mathematicians – in an unjust atmosphere of ugly patriarchal system, inequality and segregation- it wasn’t easy as they went given the titles and pay they deserved. To feminism this isn’t just a biography but rather a collection of steps and ideologies aimed at defining political, economic and social justice for women – dealing from all angles with the feminist theory.

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James Watson The Double Helix

1040 Words | 5 Pages

Wilkins in a letter to Watson carries on to state that, “The DNA story is not typical of scientific discovery; for one thing it was unusually involved with personal difficulties…[It] would give many people an impression of Francis as a feather-brained hyperthyroid, me an overgentlemanly mug and you an immature exhibitionist!” (Wilkins 1966). This still remains fairly true even after a few revisions were made as Watson likes to focus on the gossip, as if it’s a story even though he claims it as an autobiography. In another letter to Watson on a different revised version, Crick defends Rosalind’s efforts and Wilkins’ disapproval of his depictions by stating, “…The tone used to describe Rosalind’s work in the Epilogue is perfectly reasonable, but contrasts ludicrously with the descriptions of her in the text itself” (Crick 1967). This further illuminates the controversial aspect of Watson’s intention with The Double Helix.

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Benjamin Franklin's The Speech Of Miss Polly Baker

357 Words | 2 Pages

Out of the two satires by Benjamin Franklin, my favorite one was "The Speech of Miss Polly Baker". While reading I found the story very interesting. Franklin wrote "The speech of Miss Polly Baker" as a fiction to present his idea of feminism and gender inequality. With the help of the main character Polly Baker, Franklin found a genuine way to demonstrate his frustrations towards society. At the beginning, Miss Baker pleas to Judge in response to being accused of giving birth to a child.

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1869 Words | 8 Pages

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