Detailed Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks FAQ Page Now Online

rskloot — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 08:32:44 +0000

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.

rskloot Fri, 07/02/2010 - 04:32

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Skloot

I read the book today, and really enjoyed it. I woke up and finished The Man who Loved Only Numbers. Went downstairs for coffee, breakfast and the paper. Finished those and settled down to read your book.

And I did not stop until I finished it later in the afternoon.

So cool that you started with a class in a community college. My younger son took his high school biology at the local community college because the high school program lacked substance (which changed for the better the next year!). My oldest son gets disability services at the community college. I also used the community college to get back to school (including taking the biology course I skipped in high school). Next year my daughter will take community college classes as a high school junior is a state program where motivated students get both high school and college credits (Washington State's Running Start program).

You made Henrietta Lacks and her family real three-dimensional characters. Mrs. Lacks was a real person, a loving mother and someone who deserved so much better. I hope her descendants the best.

I am also so grateful that my daughter has benefited from research by receiving the HPV vaccine series a couple of years ago. She and countless other will be spared the cancer that took Mrs. Lacks away from her young family.

Thank you.

Hello, ScienceBlogs [SciencePunk]

sb admin — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 08:42:19 +0000

Hello, ScienceBlogs [SciencePunk]

As some sharp-eyed reader may have already spotted, the SciencePunk blog has relocated to the Seed Media Group's ScienceBlogs. Let's take a moment to absorb these new surroundings.

OK, done? Those of you who have already run back to check sciencepunk.com will find it too has changed substantially. Drama abounds!

From today, the whole SciencePunk caboodle is getting cranked up a notch. Wave goodbye to the version 5 we all knew and loved, and say hello to version 6. (Ah, you always wondered what that stray /v5 signified, didn't you? Why not check out v4? Web 1.0-tastic!) The site has now been diversified and distributed, so that the blogging section will now come exclusively via ScienceBlogs. Back at SciencePunk central you'll find this blog on feed, a new mini-feed of links I've found interesting but have no time to write about, separate sections for longer articles, videos, and possibly a non-science blog to vent all the wonderful and disturbing things that thrash about like angry eels in my head. Although the invitation to start blogging from the Seed servers was a pleasant surprise, the SciencePunk upgrade has been on the books for a long while.

If you've already signed up to the SciencePunk.com rss feed, then by the miracle of .htaccess code you should receive updates of all new material, both on SciencePunk.com and ScienceBlogs. If not you can sign up here.

Kudos to Arikia at ScienceBlogs for humouring my many questions and demands with grace and expedience. If anything isn't working as it should be, please don't hesitate to tell me. Abusive comments will be tolerated so long as they're funny. Regular blogging will commence once everything is running smoothly, and by golly there's a lot to write about...

sb admin Fri, 01/16/2009 - 03:42