6 ms·

A well-written story that inspires a sort of creeping, muted horror. For anyone like me who is confused by the relation of the title to the story, "The title "

A well-written story that inspires a sort of creeping, muted horror. For anyone like me who is confused by the relation of the title to the story, "The title "Lena" refers to Swedish model Lena Forsén, who is pictured in the standard test image known as "Lena" or "Lenna" <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenna https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenna>."

2bitencryption 6y ago
odd, when I first read it my brain misidentified it as "Hela cells" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeLa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeLa
- slaymaker1907 6y ago
  I thought so too, particularly given the lack of of consent from Lacks.
  - tantalor 6y ago
    Consent to what? Be photographed? I think the analogy is perfect; she consented to be photographed, but was powerless over the consequences. Edit: ah sorry, got them confused.
    - amptorn 6y ago
      Henrietta Lacks and Lena Forsén are/were different people.
    - knolax 6y ago
      Henrietta Lacks had her mutated cells collected without consent, these cells have been kept alive and duplicated for decades after her death. I sure as hell wouldn't consent to what happened to her.
      - Udik 6y ago
        I don't get this stuff about Henrietta Lacks' consent. It's a cellular line. A biopsy of a cancer. I understand consent should be given, but there's nothing personal or sentient in a strain of cancerous cells. This to me sounds just like pure, pointless whining. I can only guess she'd be happy to have been important for science and research on what killed her.
        jmcgough 6y ago
        > there's nothing personal or sentient in a strain of cancerous cells There's countless trillions of her cells, with her DNA, in research labs all over the country. She never consented to that, and her family isn't happy about it. We can't know her wishes because she died of that cancer, but something like this would never pass an ethics review board today. There is a long history of black americans being subjected to medical procedures or experiments without their consent (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Syphilis_Study https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Syphilis_Study), which makes this particularly problematic.
        Udik 6y ago
        According to the HeLa Wikipedia entry, it was common at the time to use patients' cells without their consent. The fact that she was black doesn't seem to have much to do with it, and all she was subjected to was a routine biopsy. Doctors were just delighted that those cells kept duplicating, otherwise they'd have ended in the bin like everyone else's. I do understand that discovering that one of your relatives' cancerous cells are still reproducing in laboratories after decades can be astounding and give a moment of pause. But it in the end it's for good, no one was harmed and nobody made an unjust fortune off it. The cells are barely human anyway, with 75 to 80 chromosomes and rapidly accumulating mutations. I don't see what all the fuss is about.
        knolax 6y ago
        Medical consent is "pointless whining?". There's also nothing personal or sentient about organ harvesting prisoners too. The desire to not have parts of your body kept alive after death is pretty common. Maybe it's a good thing the people of HN work on ways yo serve ads and not anything substantial.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - bargle0 6y ago
      Henrietta Lacks was the woman with the immortal cancer cell line, used for research for decades without her knowledge and consent or her family’s knowledge and consent (she died soon after the cells were harvested). She was also black, which complicates things significantly.
mpoteat 6y ago
"Red motivation" is definitely the sort of apt polite allusion people would use refer to that subject matter. Chilling!
ulnarkressty 6y ago
I FFT'd Lenna to hell and back in my EE368. Now I feel somehow morally complicit in all of this :(
otabdeveloper4 6y ago
Thankfully the idea is unrealistic. Ants are the only creatures on Earth besides humans that have built a civilization - they farm, build cities, store and cook food and generally do all the things we classify as "intelligence". They do this while lacking any brains in the conventional sense; in any case, whatever the number of neurons in an ant colony is, it is surely orders of magnitude less than the number in our deep learning networks. At this point us trying to make artificial intelligence is like Daedalus trying to master flight by gluing feathers on his arms.
sedatk 6y ago
Some tribes regarded camera as a cursed item as they thought it captured your soul. They couldn't have been more right.

2bitencryption 6y ago

odd, when I first read it my brain misidentified it as "Hela cells" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeLa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeLa

slaymaker1907 6y ago
I thought so too, particularly given the lack of of consent from Lacks.
- tantalor 6y ago
  Consent to what? Be photographed? I think the analogy is perfect; she consented to be photographed, but was powerless over the consequences. Edit: ah sorry, got them confused.
  - amptorn 6y ago
    Henrietta Lacks and Lena Forsén are/were different people.
  - knolax 6y ago
    Henrietta Lacks had her mutated cells collected without consent, these cells have been kept alive and duplicated for decades after her death. I sure as hell wouldn't consent to what happened to her.
    - Udik 6y ago
      I don't get this stuff about Henrietta Lacks' consent. It's a cellular line. A biopsy of a cancer. I understand consent should be given, but there's nothing personal or sentient in a strain of cancerous cells. This to me sounds just like pure, pointless whining. I can only guess she'd be happy to have been important for science and research on what killed her.
      - jmcgough 6y ago
        > there's nothing personal or sentient in a strain of cancerous cells There's countless trillions of her cells, with her DNA, in research labs all over the country. She never consented to that, and her family isn't happy about it. We can't know her wishes because she died of that cancer, but something like this would never pass an ethics review board today. There is a long history of black americans being subjected to medical procedures or experiments without their consent (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Syphilis_Study https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Syphilis_Study), which makes this particularly problematic.
        Udik 6y ago
        According to the HeLa Wikipedia entry, it was common at the time to use patients' cells without their consent. The fact that she was black doesn't seem to have much to do with it, and all she was subjected to was a routine biopsy. Doctors were just delighted that those cells kept duplicating, otherwise they'd have ended in the bin like everyone else's. I do understand that discovering that one of your relatives' cancerous cells are still reproducing in laboratories after decades can be astounding and give a moment of pause. But it in the end it's for good, no one was harmed and nobody made an unjust fortune off it. The cells are barely human anyway, with 75 to 80 chromosomes and rapidly accumulating mutations. I don't see what all the fuss is about.
      - knolax 6y ago
        Medical consent is "pointless whining?". There's also nothing personal or sentient about organ harvesting prisoners too. The desire to not have parts of your body kept alive after death is pretty common. Maybe it's a good thing the people of HN work on ways yo serve ads and not anything substantial.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - bargle0 6y ago
    Henrietta Lacks was the woman with the immortal cancer cell line, used for research for decades without her knowledge and consent or her family’s knowledge and consent (she died soon after the cells were harvested). She was also black, which complicates things significantly.

mpoteat 6y ago

"Red motivation" is definitely the sort of apt polite allusion people would use refer to that subject matter. Chilling!

ulnarkressty 6y ago

I FFT'd Lenna to hell and back in my EE368. Now I feel somehow morally complicit in all of this :(

otabdeveloper4 6y ago

Thankfully the idea is unrealistic. Ants are the only creatures on Earth besides humans that have built a civilization - they farm, build cities, store and cook food and generally do all the things we classify as "intelligence". They do this while lacking any brains in the conventional sense; in any case, whatever the number of neurons in an ant colony is, it is surely orders of magnitude less than the number in our deep learning networks. At this point us trying to make artificial intelligence is like Daedalus trying to master flight by gluing feathers on his arms.

sedatk 6y ago

Some tribes regarded camera as a cursed item as they thought it captured your soul. They couldn't have been more right.