human

"We must not see any person as an abstraction. 

Instead, we must see in every person a universe 

with its own secrets, with its own treasures, 

with its own sources of anguish, and with some measure of triumph."

- Elie Wiesel

from The Nazi Doctors and the Nuremberg Code

I'm reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot right now. This quote from the amazing Elie Wiesel was at the beginning of the book and I can't stop thinking about it. I'm only about 80 pages into the book but I'm loving it so far. We always learn about HeLa cells in science classes and they have been used for thousands of experiments, but we don't talk much about Henrietta Lacks, the source of those cells. Henrietta died from cervical cancer at age 31. I feel so much more appreciation for those cells when I consider Henrietta's life, her suffering, and the family she left behind. We must always remember the value of each person.