Brown Bag Book Discussion Group will meet on Wednesday, January 8th at 1:00 PM in the Middlebury Public Library’s Meeting Room to discuss The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. The group is reading this in conjunction with the Avon Free Public Library’s series of events regarding The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, including “A Conversation With the Lacks Family” on Friday, March 14th at the Avon Free Library. For further information, please contact Donna at 203-758-2634.
Book Description:
“Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but
scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who
worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells—taken without
her knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine. The
first ‘immortal’ human cells grown in culture, they are still alive
today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. If you could
pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, they’d weigh more than 50
million metric tons—as much as a hundred Empire State Buildings. HeLa
cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of
cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb’s effects; helped lead to important
advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and
have been bought and sold by the billions.
Now Rebecca Skloot takes us on an
extraordinary journey, from the ‘colored’ ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital
in the 1950s to stark white laboratories with freezers full of HeLa
cells; from Henrietta’s small, dying hometown of Clover, Virginia—a land
of wooden slave quarters, faith healings, and voodoo—to East Baltimore
today, where her children and grandchildren live and struggle with the
legacy of her cells.”
(Image and book description provided courtesy of www.goodreads.com)