The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks August 25, 2010

Join us for a talk and book signing by Rebecca Skloot as she 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, to East Baltimore today, where her children and grandchildren live, and struggle with the legacy of her cells. 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 60 years. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is an important and provocative story of racism, greed, science, and ethics.