What Rebecca's Reading
- 'Serpent-Handling' West Virginia Pastor Dies From Snake Bite A “serpent-handling” West Virginia pastor died after his rattlesnake bit him during a church ritual, just as the man had apparently watched a snake kill his father years before.
- A Dispute Over Who Owns a Twitter Account Goes to Court How much is a tweet worth? And how much does a Twitter follower cost?
- A dollar badly spent: New facts on processed food in school lunches In a collaboration between The New York Times and the Investigative Fund, reporter Lucy Komisar delved into the billion-dollar business of the national school lunch program and found some unsettling news.
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June 7, 2013
The Sequel to The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks – Now Online (Free)
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The story goes on: Recently, scientists announced that they’d sequenced the genome of Henrietta Lacks’s cells and published it online, where it was freely available to anyone who cared to download it. When news of the genome hit, Rebecca Skloot’s inbox exploded. People wanted to know: did scientists get the family’s permission to sequence publish Henrietta’s genetic information (which also contains genetic information about her family)? The answer is no. As Francis S. Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, says: “This latest HeLa situation really shows us that our policy is lagging years and maybe decades behind the science. It’s time to catch up.”
Read the full story of this latest chapter in the story of Henrietta Lacks and her family in Rebecca Skloot’s OpEd in the New York Times, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks The Sequel, the first update published on the Lacks family since The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks was released.
And for Rebecca Skloot’s reaction to the (lack of) media coverage of this latest development in the HeLa story, see HeLa Curious Coverage: Media overlook ethical angles of Henrietta Lacks story
The Henrietta Lacks Foundation
The Henrietta Lacks Foundation strives to provide financial assistance to needy individuals who have made important contributions to scientific research without their knowledge or consent.
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