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14243_318928475292_541515292_9701050_3340719_n.jpg Rebecca Skloot is an award-winning science writer, and author of the New York Times Bestselling book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. It tells the story of HeLa -- the first immortal human cell line ever grown in culture (pictured in the blog's banner) -- the woman those cells came from, and the family she left behind. The book has been featured on Fresh Air with Terry Gross, CBS Sunday Morning, The Colbert Report, and many others. To see those segments and find information, reviews, book special features, and more, visit her website. Skloot is also a contributing editor at Popular Science magazine; she's worked as a correspondent for WNYC's RadioLab, and PBS's Nova ScienceNOW. Her writing appears in The New York Times Magazine, O: The Oprah Magazine, Discover and others.

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July 8, 2010

Culture Dish Has a New Home ... At Least For Now

Category: HousekeepingNews

Please redirect your browsers to Culture Dish's new home, where we've just put up the inaugural welcome post.  There you will find an RSS to subscribe to so you can follow Culture Dish wherever it goes next (which we very much hope you'll do).

July 7, 2010

Culture Dish Doesn't Live Here Anymore

Category: BioethicsHousekeepingNewsPersonal

As I said  yesterday on Twitter, a big conflict of interest and transparency problem has arisen on ScienceBlogs. Like several other bloggers here, I'm now on a hiatus, however like like David Dobb's and Blake Stacy's, my hiatus from ScienceBlogs will be permanent. I've been contemplating a move from ScienceBlogs for a while for several reasons, but PepsiGate has sealed the deal for me. Several of my ScienceBlogs colleagues have summed up the situation well, including PZ Myers, GrrlScientist, and Brian over at Laelaps. For a full recap of the issue and other ScienceBloggers' responses, see this post from today's Guardian. For a clear explanation of the ethical problems that make it so I will no longer be affiliated with Science Blogs, see this from the Knight Journalism Tracker: "ScienceBlogs Trashes its Bloggers' Credibility." 

I'm now looking for a new permanent home for my blog. For now, I have moved Culture Dish onto my website, where I'll be posting until further notice.  You can follow me there via RSS feed, and of course, you can also follow me on Twitter and Facebook.

UPDATE: The Guardian has just posted this letter sent to all ScienceBlogs bloggers today by  Adam Bly, head of Seed Media Group and ScienceBlogs.

Update 2: See the Knight Journalism Tracker's response to Adam Bly's email linked above. 
 
Update 3: ScienceBloggers have just received a note from Adam Bly saying that in response to all of this, ScienceBlogs has begun making changes to the Pepsi blog, including adding a statement about conflict of interest and funding, adding a banner labeling it as "Advertorial."

Update 4:  Adam Bly just announced via email that the PepsiCo blog has now been canceled.  

July 2, 2010

Detailed Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks FAQ Page Now Online

Category: Book RelatedHeLaHeLa FAQsPublication News and FollowupsThe Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

phpJjtjUQAM-1.jpg
I've been working for a while to develop a Frequently Asked Questions page to answers the most common reader questions about The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.  Well, it's now online, and it addresses questions ranging from why HeLa cells are immortal to how the Lacks family is benefiting from the book. It also includes answers to commonly asked publishing questions, like, How do I break into science writing?  You can read it online here.  If you have burning questions not answered there, leave them in the comments section below -- I'll add to the FAQ as questions arise and time allows.
 

July 1, 2010

First Experiment to Attempt Prevention of Homosexuality in Womb? Really?

Category: BioethicsBook RelatedWomen and Science

Pregnant with Foot.jpgA press release landed in my inbox today with this headline, which raised my eyebrows (as it was obviously intended to do): "First Experiment to Attempt Prevention of Homosexuality in Womb."  It starts with this quote from Alice Dreger, a Northwestern University bioethicist: "This is the first we know in the history of medicine that clinicians are actively trying to prevent homosexuality." The release was announcing the publication of a piece at the Hastings Center Bioethics Forum titled, "Preventing Homosexuality (and Uppity Women) in the Womb? -- it was written by the same authors that started quite a stir recently over one researchers use of vibrators in follow up exams with young girls to test whether their clitorises worked after he'd surgically altered them.

May 31, 2010

More on Henrietta Lacks's New Grave Marker

Category: HeLaPublication News and FollowupsThe Immortal Life of Henrietta LacksWomen and Science

Anyone interested in Henrietta Lacks and the grave marker finally placed on her long unmarked grave this weekend should click here immediately for a beautiful post by scientist David Kroll, who attended the unveiling ceremony.  It's filled with beautiful photos of the day, and a tribute to all Henrietta's cells did for science.  His photo below shows Henrietta's new headstone in much sharper detail than the one I posted yesterday with the text of the inscription.  Visit his post for many more photos of the ceremony, the graveyard, and Henrietta's family.
Henrietta Lacks gravestone 05.30.10 copyright David J Kroll.jpeg

May 29, 2010

A Historic Day: Henrietta Lacks's Long Unmarked Grave Finally Gets a Headstone

Category: BioethicsHeLaPublication News and FollowupsThe Immortal Life of Henrietta LacksWomen and Science

Today is a very exciting day:  Henrietta Lacks (aka HeLa) has been lying in an unmarked grave since her death in 1951. Today, thanks to Dr. Roland Pattillo at Morehouse School of Medicine, who donated a headstone after reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, her grave is finally marked.  Below, a snapshot of some members of the Lacks family beside the new marker for Henrietta, and the marker for her daughter, Elsie, which was also unveiled today.  Dr. Roland Pattillo is pictured at the far left:
Henrietta Lacks funeral.jpg
Her stone, in case you can't tell from the picture, is shaped like a book. The text was written by members of the Lacks family. It reads:
  
Henrietta Lacks, August 01, 1920-October 04, 1951.  
In loving memory of a phenomenal woman, wife and mother who touched the lives of many. 
Here lies Henrietta Lacks (HeLa).  Her immortal cells will continue to help mankind forever.
Eternal Love and Admiration, From Your Family 



Many thanks to Melissa Bell for the photo.


May 13, 2010

HeLa Onscreen: Oprah and Alan Ball to Make Film of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks for HBO

Category: BioethicsBook RelatedHeLaPublication News and FollowupsThe Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

winfrey_oprah_04.jpgThings have been a bit quiet here as I finished up my crazy four-month-long book tour, and there's much to catch up on.  First, some big news just in: Oprah, Alan Ball, and HBO are going to be making a movie version of my book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.  This news has gotten quite a bit of coverage on Twitter and elsewhere, with me fielding questions about the movie, and various folks voting on who should play which character in the film (not that I have any control over such things, but it's still fun to think about). 

The combination of Oprah, Alan Ball, and HBO is nothing short of a dream team for me.ball_alan_01.jpg I've always been a huge fan of everyone involved, and I think HBO is the perfect home for this movie. Several people have asked why I went with HBO instead of a big screen major motion picture version, and there are several reasons. HBO makes some of the best and smartest movies out there these days, particularly when it comes to complex true stories that mix science, ethics, and real human stories. Check out You Don't Know Jack, the recent HBO film starring Al Pacino as Jack Kevorkian, and Temple Grandin starring Claire Danes, to name just a few of the most recent examples.  It was very important to me that the film find a home that would do justice to the family's story, the science, and the scientists -- I have no doubt HBO, Oprah, and Ball will do just that.  And the Lacks family and I will be involved along the way:  We'll be consulting on the film. As Ball said in a recent interview about the HeLa movie, "This is going to be a journey that we'll all remember for the rest of our lives." I'm very excited for it.

Photo captions: Pictured above left: Oprah.  Pictured above right: Alan Ball.

April 6, 2010

Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks FAQ #2: Did Skloot really flunk high school?

Category: BioethicsBook RelatedHeLaHeLa FAQsScience WritingThe Immortal Life of Henrietta LacksWomen and Science

Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.small.jpgI'm posting answers to FAQs about my book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, as an ongoing series on this blog.  In my last FAQ post, I told the story of how I first learned about HeLa cells at sixteen.  A related question I often get has to do with this one sentence in the book's prologue:

"I was a kid who'd failed freshman year at the regular public high school because she never showed up. I'd transferred to an alternative school that offered dream studies instead of biology, so I was taking Defler's class for high-school credit, which meant that I was sitting in a college lecture hall at sixteen with words like mitosis and kinase inhibitors flying around. I was completely lost."

People say, WHAT?! You failed high school?!

April 5, 2010

Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks FAQ#1: How did Skloot learn about HeLa cells?

Category: BioethicsBook RelatedHeLaHeLa FAQsScience WritingThe Immortal Life of Henrietta LacksWomen and Science

Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.small.jpgI mentioned a while ago that I'll be posting answers to FAQs about my book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, as an ongoing series on this blog.

I thought I'd start the FAQs with one of the most commonly asked questions: How did you learn about Henrietta and the HeLa cells, and why did they grab you the way they did? Here is the answer, which I also posted about over on Powells.com's book blog this last week as part of a little guest blogging stint:

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