Rebecca Skloot's Blog

Share Your Story and Join the Conversation.

If you have read The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks, we want to hear from you!

Visit the Readers Talk page on RebeccaSkloot.com.

Since the book was published, readers of all kinds — scientists, teachers, nurses, librarians, members of book groups, high school and college kids, people old and young from all over the world — have emailed, written to and faxed author Rebecca Skloot sharing their thoughts about HeLa, and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. So many readers have been personally touched by her story. We want to hear from you too!

Tell us what you think in a short video. Did the book change the way you think about cells, science, medical practices, research, race, American history, the way cancer is treated? What is your relationship to HeLa? Did HeLa cells help save your life of the life of someone you love? Did the book change how you think about your own research? Were you touched by the story of Henrietta’s family? If the book moved you, we want to hear about it.

Share Your Story – Submit Your Own Video

It’s simple. Record a short video (target length: one minute) and share what The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks has meant to you. Your webcam or a cell phone/digital camera’s video function is perfect. Three easy ways to get your video to us:

Post the video to Facebook. Go to the Henrietta Lacks Facebook page, click the “video” link at the top of the wall, and then select “record video.” Your video will record and post right there on the wall – easy as that!

Post the video to YouTube. Then send an email with a link to your video to renee@rebeccaskloot.com.

Deliver the video via file sharing site. Upload the video to YouSendIt or another file sharing site. Then send an email with download information for your video to renee@rebeccaskloot.com.

Two important details:
(1) Please do not have any music playing in the background and
(2) Please tag your video “HenriettaLacksReadersTalk.”

If your video is chosen, we will be in touch and will ask you to sign a release so we can feature the video here on the Readers Talk page.

Want to share your story but can’t send video?

Visit the HeLa Forum on Rebecca Skloot.com.

Please redirect your browsers to Culture Dish's new home, where we've just put up the inaugural welcome post.  There you will find an RSS to subscribe to so you can follow Culture Dish wherever it goes next (which we very much hope you'll do). Read the comments on this post...

As I said  yesterday on Twitter, a conflict of interest and transparency problem has arisen on ScienceBlogs. Like several other bloggers here, I'm now on a Pepsi-Induced Hiatus, however like like David Dobb's and Blake Stacy's, my hiatus from ScienceBlogs will be permanent.  Several of my ScienceBlogs colleagues have summed up the situation well, including PZ Myers, GrrlScientist, and Brian over at Laelaps. For a full recap of the situation see this post from today's Guardian, and for an expl...

[image error] 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...

[image error]A press release landed in my inbox today with this headline, which raised my eyebrows (as it was obviously intended to do): "First Experiment to Attempt Prevention of Homosexuality in Womb."  It starts with this quote from Alice Dreger, a Northwestern University bioethicist: "This is the first we know in the history of medicine that clinicians are actively trying to prevent homosexuality." The release was announcing the publication of a piece at the Hastings Center Bioethics Forum titled, ...

[image error]A press release landed in my inbox today with this headline, which raised my eyebrows (as it was obviously intended to do): "First Experiment to Attempt Prevention of Homosexuality in Womb."  It starts with this quote from Alice Dreger, a Northwestern University bioethicist: "This is the first we know in the history of medicine that clinicians are actively trying to prevent homosexuality." The release was announcing the publication of a piece at the Hastings Center Bioethics Forum titled, ...

Anyone interested in Henrietta Lacks and the grave marker finally placed on her long unmarked grave this weekend should click here immediately for a beautiful post by scientist David Kroll, who attended the unveiling ceremony.  It's filled with beautiful photos of the day, and a tribute to all Henrietta's cells did for science.  His photo below shows Henrietta's new headstone in much sharper detail than the one I posted yesterday with the text of the inscription.  Visit his post for many more...

Today is a very exciting day:  Henrietta Lacks (aka HeLa) has been lying in an unmarked grave since her death in 1951. Today, thanks to Dr. Roland Pattillo at Morehouse School of Medicine, who donated a headstone after reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks , her grave is finally marked.  Below, a snapshot of some members of the Lacks family beside the new marker for Henrietta, and the marker for her daughter, Elsie, which was also unveiled today.  Dr. Roland Pattillo is pictured at the ...

[image error]Things have been a bit quiet here as I finished up my crazy
four-month-long book tour, and there's much to catch up on.  First, some big news just in: Oprah,
Alan Ball, and HBO are going to be making a movie version of my book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.  This news has gotten quite a bit of
coverage on Twitter and elsewhere, with me fielding questions about the movie,
and various folks voting on who should play which character in the film (not
that I have any control over such...

[image error]I'm posting answers to FAQs about my book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, as an ongoing series on this blog.  In my last FAQ post, I told the story of how I first learned about HeLa cells at sixteen.  A related question I often get has to do with this one sentence in the book's prologue:

"I was a kid who'd failed freshman year at the regular public high
school because she never showed up. I'd transferred to an alternative
school that offered dream studies instead of biology, so I...