Rebecca Skloot is an award-winning science writer, and a contributing editor at Popular Science magazine; she's worked as a correspondent for the NPR show RadioLab, and PBS Nova ScienceNOW. Her writing appears in The New York Times Magazine, O: The Oprah Magazine, Discover and others. She teaches in the University of Memphis's creative writing program. Her first book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, is forthcoming from Crown on February 2, 2010. 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. Click Welcome to Culture Dish for an introduction to this blog and its author.
Big week here at Culture Dish! The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and its author (yours truly) were on the cover of Publishers Weekly (please note: THRILLED!). Inside that issue was a profile of me with some of book's backstory, a short excerpt from the book (longer excerpt coming soon in O, the Oprah Magazine), also a story I wrote about the crazy book tour I'm organizing (posted about previously here). But that was just the beginning of this week's HeLa developments.
Calling all academics: If you'd like a free advanced copy of my book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, to consider it for course adoption, get thee to Random House's academic blog and request a copy quick, while supplies last (which probably won't be long at the rate things are going). See below for more information on the book, and advanced praise. It's a story with wide potential for course adoption in the sciences, bioethics, African-American studies, womens studies, creative writing, journalism, and much more. Added bonus: If you teach the book this spring, you can also get me to come speak at your school/in your classes as part of my book tour.
Some interesting news about the breast cancer patent lawsuit I wrote about for Slate's Double X Magazine a few months ago: A federal district court has just agreed to hear the case. When the lawsuit was first filed, many legal experts I talked to said they were sure the case would get thrown out of court for it's unusual approach, namely that it claims that the practice of patenting genes is unconstitutional See my story about the case here. Filings and other documents related to the case available here. And see below for the full press release about today's news:
Inside Higher Ed just reported that an adjunct instructor at the University of Akron quit when he was told that he had to submit to DNA testing. "It's not enough that the university doesn't pay us a living wage, or
provide us with health insurance," the instructor said, "but now they want to sacrifice the
sanctity of our bodies. No." He was right to question their policy: The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 specifically states:
It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any employee, or otherwise to
discriminate against any employee with respect to the compensation,
terms, conditions, or privileges of employment of the employee, because
of genetic information with respect to the employee
Lots of excitement and news about my book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (aka HeLa),
which hits stores February 2nd (after ten years in the works). It just got a starred review in Publishers Weekly and in Booklist, and was chosen as a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers title for Spring 2010. Culture Dish is very excited about all of this. But the big news for this post is that I'm organizing a three-month-long book tour that will have me speaking nationwide at
universities, scientific organizations, bookstores, book groups, high schools, and
more. If you'd like me to speak about the book, about HeLa, the history and ethics of tissue culture, race and medicine, or any number of other related topics, see the Immortal Life's interactive book tour map below. Click
on your region to see when I'm scheduled to be in your area, and email me to bring The Immortal Life to your town.
The Immortal Book Tour is a grass-roots, author-funded tour on a scale that no sane publishing house would or could organize or fund. (For those not familiar with the publishing industry, see here for the New Yorker's humorous take on why this sort of thing is necessary). Crazy as it may be, I'm convinced it will be a fun and effective way to spread the word about this book -- and honestly, after ten years of working on it solo, I'm ready to go talk about it with everyone I can. I admit, I've imagined touring in one of these with cells painted all over it, but at this point, due to budget constraints, I may be touring in one of these. This tour will depend entirely on and funding from talks at universities and other venues, so locations able
to help cover expenses get priority (and many, many thanks), but I'm also looking to hear from bookstores and other organizations in towns I'll be visiting, where I'll gladly speak if I'm able to get myself there. Interactive book tour map and link for below the jump (and if you're interested in having me speak at a date after the tour, that works too: my schedule for summer and fall is wide open at this point):
Because of the flood of responses I got to yesterday's post on The Insanity of the FDA Approved Obesity Drug for Dogs, I thought I'd start a series of follow up posts answering the many questions I got by email and in the comments here. The most common question was, Okay, so the drug is a bad idea, but what else can we do to make sure our pets don't get or stay fat? Below is a column I once wrote for Prevention Magazine, followed by tips, which should answer the most common questions:
When I was a teenager, I came home from school one day to find L.C., my
family's beagle, lying on the bottom shelf of our refrigerator. She was
nearly comatose and shaped like a loaf of bread. We knew L.C. had food
issues: She yowled in agony when people ate. She once swiped a
Thanksgiving turkey, dragged it out the dog door, and devoured it. She
studied us every time we opened the refrigerator. So in retrospect,
it's no surprise she ended up inside it.
The other day I took my dogs to the vet for a checkup and saw a woman with her morbidly obese dog waiting to fill her prescription for Slentrol -- the first obesity drug for dogs -- which made me feel the need to resurrect this post below, which I wrote the day the FDA announced they'd approved the drug for use in dogs:
The FDA just announced that they've just approved the first-ever obesity drug for dogs, which really makes me cringe. Why? Because dogs don't have eating disorders -- their owners have feeding disorders.
Yes folks, it's that time again: Registration is now open for the great ScienceOnline2010 meeting that will take place (as always) in Durham, NC in January. The program features many great scientists, science bloggers, and science journalists, and promises to be lots of fun. I'll be running a session with Tom LevensonandBrian Switek called "From Blog to Book: Using Blogs and Social Networks to Develop Your Professional Writing," and I'll also be doing a hands-on, nuts-and-bolts workshop helping folks develop proposals for books and articles. See the program for details, and sign up!
Today was a big day for non-canine service animal news, which I keep tabs on here as part of ongoing follow up to my New York Times Magazine article, Creature Comforts, about the use of non-canine service animals (which include ducks, monkeys, horses, goats, and at least one kangaroo). The biggest news is that a court in Missouri has rejected the discrimination case filed by Debby Rose, who I featured in my story. She was forbidden to bring her Macaque monkey Richard into local businesses, despite the fact that she says he's a service monkey trained to help with her agoraphobia (Richard pictured above driving with Debby).
Rebecca Skloot is an award-winning science writer, and a contributing editor at 
