senescence

A truly inconceivable debt of gratitude is owed to young woman by the name of Henrietta Lacks and to the team of physicians and technicians who tried to care for her at Johns-Hopkins. After a difficult pregnancy brought to term in late 1950, Lacks was tragically found to have a form of cervical cancer. Though afforded the best treatment of the day at the university research hospital (the illustrious Johns Hopkins being the only medical facility in segregated Maryland that would accept African-American patients), she eventually succumbed to the malady. A biopsy was performed on the tumour, unbeknownst to Lacks and her family—though it was not custom to provide consent for medical release at the time, and samples were retained for study.

The culture of cells, however, exhibited a surprising resiliency, and given the right environmental conditions will propagate without end—a property that not even the most cancerous or healthy cells demonstrate outside the human body—which led researchers to declare the unique line to be immortal. Prior to this discovery, medical studies on human cell cultures was very labourous as lines did not survive more than a couple of divisions (generations) and were not conducive of any longer term research into the impact of chemical compounds and potential toxic-affects. Lacks’ line (known as HeLa from her initials) was radically different and was almost immediately recognised by the scientific and medical community for its hitherto unimagined potential. The cultivation of HeLa cell lines coincided with the work of virologist Jonas Salk and enabled him to develop a safe vaccine that’s all but eradicated the plague of polio. By 1955, these cells became the first to be cloned and have been propagated to laboratories worldwide for countless applications. Over six decades later, the same deathless cells (which has prompted some to suggest that the mutation is actually an emerging speciation—the chromosomes of these cells don’t shed telomeres when they replicate, unlike normal cells, and biologists believe that this degradation causes ageing and dotage) are still pioneering research into gerontology, cancer AIDS and countless other infectious diseases as well as environmental pollutants and contaminants. Without Lacks’ contribution, the sequencing and mapping of the human genome—and associated insights, probably would still be a work in progress. Lacks’ family had no idea of Henrietta’s legacy until the 1970s, and after her contribution received due recognition, two members of the family were invited to sit on an ethics panel that has oversight on the use of the line’s DNA—not to hinder important medical research, but rather to help guide and monitor experimentation on HeLa itself.

300 or hoplites and helots

Sparta-worship is nothing new and has gone through numerous and at times—maybe mostly, dangerous revivals. Revolutionaries as varied as those who fought for independence under the British Mandate of Palestine or under colonial Britain in North America based their extolling, exhortation and sometimes lament in failing to live up to that example on a long chain of praise that extended all the way back to times contemporaneous with the Spartan civilisation. This romancing of the austere and disciplined lifestyle practised goes by the name laconophilia (from Laconia where they lived and hence laconic or blunt) and while the course of history may have was neither steered solely by either admirers or detractors (who importantly saw the Spartans’ faults and warned that theirs was not a society to emulate) their battle-cry is heard sometimes in unexpected places. That Nazism was steeped in Nordic traditions and mythology (including fabricated volk-etymologies purely to forward their agenda) is patently well-known but I never knew that the Nazis had cast their maniacal nets further south as well and believed that the Spartans (as part of the larger “race” of Dorians) also embodied their ideal. 
Of course it was not their deportment as rational stoics or temperate individuals that held the appeal (then and now, and die neue Dorier did not go unheard) but rather the reputation of these hoplites (citizen-soldiers) on the battlefield, whose glory came at a high price—with most willing to dismiss this fascination as sophomoric, the Spartans excelling only at war through a regiment that left trainees little better than broken and brainwashed, a strict caste-system, peace untenable and dependent on a subjugated population of feudal farmers called the Helots (considered to be natural slaves).  The ability to achieve and sustain this proto-fascist state through eugenics (though without the nobles lies of The Republic) was aligned with what Nazi Germany hoped to emulate, but I am not sure what brought about that political syncretism that mingled the Norse gods with Mediterranean traditions, but perhaps it was how just a few decades prior, a German entrepreneur and amateur archaeologist was able to dynamite his way to Priam’s Treasure and significantly prove to the world that there was at least a kernel of historical fact behind the legends. Feats of renown are especially prone to misappropriation.

5x5

posture pals: one sufferer’s quest to alleviate her own pain caused her to notice that many indigenous peoples never get back pain

heaps of abuse: the cyberbullying of a Sanrio character focuses on the psyche of tormentors

rotunda: Cupolone lamp shades feature local architectural attractions

fish-eye lens: Dutch company’s floating dome affords fish a view of the world above the surface

taste buds: cute illustrations of food super best friends, including Chicken and Waffle

jacob’s ladder

Previously on PfRC, we set out to experience what’s called a Paternoster, a cyclical elevator, and upon learning that there were two housed in buildings I knew, spent the lunch-hour investigating. First I tried the Federal Office of Statistics (Statistisches Bundesamt oder Destatis), which I always regarded as a curious institution to begin with.  It’s sort of like the Harper’s Index for the state of Germany—whenever rarefied, detached facts and figures, the numbers of bean-counters, are cited in the news (employment, traffic accidents, annual litres of beer per capita, the price of eggs in China), it’s often given the dateline of Wiesbaden—and I suppose it’s doubly curious that this bureau would hold on to its relic of a Paternoster as I could just imagine the report being compiled in those corridors about how x-number of Germans were maimed by this contraption in the past quarter. The staff at the reception area were bemused with my request and friendly enough but said it was too dangerous and reserved only for employees of the bureau. Maybe in keeping track of statistics, they somehow avoided becoming one. The staff at the reception also recommended that I try another place, an insurance building just two blocks away.  I was skeptical about there being another so close and in such a modern (and squat) building but I asked at the front desk.
Replying that this had been their third inquiry for the day, I was again told that it was too great a liability (being an insurance company) that I could not ride in it but was allowed through the lobby to look. The conveyor-belt of narrow coffin-like wooden compartments going up and down at a really brisk pace was really keen to behold and I wasn’t sure that I would have stepped into this Jacob’s Ladder willingly myself under other circumstances. H, who was unaware that any still remained, had ridden a Paternoster before and admitted it was a little scary but exhilarating. The construction reminded me of the wooden escalator H and I rode on in the original Macy’s department store in New York City. Undeterred if not now a bit obsessed with the idea, I plan to look a bit further afield. Next time I find myself in Frankfurt, I will make it a priority (or make a special trip) to visit the campus of Goethe University, whose iconic administration building (originally the ensemble of the IG Farben company with intervening incarnations as the command-and-control of the Allied powers, the headquarters of the US Army and the seat of US Army Corps of Engineers) where there is a bank of eight functioning Paternosters—beloved by the student-body and probably won’t be gutted any time soon in the name of safety.