NEW "Go Big Read" book: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

UW-Madison's 2010-2011 choice for the "Go Big Read" common book program:

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

Amazon Best Books of the Month, February 2010: From a single, abbreviated life grew a seemingly immortal line of cells that made some of the most crucial innovations in modern science possible. And from that same life, and those cells, Rebecca Skloot has fashioned in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks a fascinating and moving story of medicine and family, of how life is sustained in laboratories and in memory. Henrietta Lacks was a mother of five in Baltimore, a poor African American migrant from the tobacco farms of Virginia, who died from a cruelly aggressive cancer at the age of 30 in 1951. A sample of her cancerous tissue, taken without her knowledge or consent, as was the custom then, turned out to provide one of the holy grails of mid-century biology: human cells that could survive--even thrive--in the lab. Known as HeLa cells, their stunning potency gave scientists a building block for countless breakthroughs, beginning with the cure for polio. Meanwhile, Henrietta's family continued to live in poverty and frequently poor health, and their discovery decades later of her unknowing contribution--and her cells' strange survival--left them full of pride, anger, and suspicion. For a decade, Skloot doggedly but compassionately gathered the threads of these stories, slowly gaining the trust of the family while helping them learn the truth about Henrietta, and with their aid she tells a rich and haunting story that asks the questions, Who owns our bodies? And who carries our memories? --Tom Nissley

Related books:

• A conspiracy of cells: one woman’s immortal legacy and the medical scandal it caused (1986)
• Race and medicine in nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century America (2007)
• Medical apartheid: the dark history of medical experimentation on Black Americans from colonial times to the present (2006)
• Protection of human participants from risks and exploitation in biomedical research: an analysis of the law of South Africa and international ethical principles (2002)

UW-Madison dissertations & theses:

• Identification and partial characterization of kinesin and dynein from cultured HeLa cells (1989)
• The purification and characterization of HeLa cytosolic DNA polymerase α and two stimulatory proteins (1984)
• Photo cross-linking of nuclear proteins to newly replicated DNA in isolated HeLa cell nuclei (1981)
• The microtubule protein of cultured HeLa cells (1980)
• DNA chain growth and organization of replicating units in living HeLa cells and isolated HeLa nuclei (1976)
• Studies on HeLa cell nuclear DNA synthesis: the role of the cytoplasmic supernatant (1972)
• An investigation of the mechanism of hyperthermic killing of HeLa Cells (1972)
• The distribution of fluoride between media and cellular water of HeLa and L cells (1967)
• Studies on the metabolism of sodium fluoride. I. Plasma fluoride in relation to dietary fluoride in dairy cattle. II. Effects of fluoride on growth and metabolism of HeLa cells (1966)
• The metabolism of basic nuclear proteins from synchronized HeLa cells (1966)
• RNA synthesis and nuclear RNA polymerase activity of HeLa cells in relation to cell growth (1966)
• Infection and growth of Brucella strains of different virulence in HeLa cells and guinea pig mononuclear phagocytes (1962)
• The influence of puromycin on the growth of poliovirus in HeLa cells (1962)
• Phospholipid metabolism in synchronized cultures of HeLa cells (1962)
• Studies on amino acid activating enzyme in HeLa culture in varying physiological states of growth (1961)
• Studies on the growth of the Hela cell in tissue culture (1960)
• The influence of salt concentration on growth and morphology of HeLa cells (1959)