#rebecca skloot

[haveyoureadthisbook-poll]

[proceduralbob]

Sonny had a quintuple bypass in 2003, when he was fifty-six years old—the last thing he remembered before falling unconscious under the anesthesia was a doctor standing over him saying his mother’s cells were one of the most important things that had ever happened to medicine. Sonny woke up more than $125,000 in debt because he didn’t have health insurance to cover the surgery.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot

[linusjf]

Rebecca Skloot: We worry

[realityfragments]

Finally: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.

Yesterday, on an adventure that included accidentally finding the worst lamb gyro in Trinidad and Tobago, I found myself in a bookstore in a mall. The selections are generally dismal in Trinidad for me, which is unfair since I have read much in my life and it’s hard to find things that appeal to me. Still, the name on that cover. Is it? Could it be? I began thumbing through the pages when the…

[thechanelmuse]

My Book Review

"There isn't a person alive who hasn't benefited from my mother's cells." I read this book almost 2 months ago. Nineteen books later, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is still embedded and fresh in my brain. Still feeling a range of emotions because of the subject matter, Henrietta’s back story, the branch of stories within the main rooted story that highlights her children, the absolute rare and unique nature of Henrietta’s cells, and the voice of Deborah Lacks. This book could've only been told this way.

I've known about Henrietta Lacks and her unforgettable family for years, but kept putting this book off for obvious reasons. Hauntingly unsettling. Just one of many pages within the medical exploitation of Black Americans. Henrietta's stolen cellular language speaks in the form of indefinite replication outside of the body as the sole provider used in cure and treatment discovery that impacts the world. She existed before I was born and she'll continue to exist after we all pass on. How can something be traumatizing, infuriating, and fascinating all at the same time...

[theambitiouswoman]

Book Recommendations 📚📒

Business and Leadership:

"Good to Great" by Jim Collins

"The Lean Startup" by Eric Ries

"Zero to One" by Peter Thiel

"Leaders Eat Last" by Simon Sinek

"Outliers: The Story of Success" by Malcolm Gladwell

Success and Personal Development:

"The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" by Stephen R. Covey

"Mindset: The New Psychology of Success" by Carol S. Dweck

"Atomic Habits" by James Clear

"Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance" by Angela Duckworth

"The Power of Habit" by Charles Duhigg

Mental Health and Well-being:

"The Power of Now" by Eckhart Tolle

"Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy" by David D. Burns

"The Gifts of Imperfection" by Brené Brown

"The Anxiety and Phobia Workbook" by Edmund J. Bourne

"The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook" by Matthew McKay, Jeffrey C. Wood, and Jeffrey Brantley

Goal Setting and Achievement:

"Goals!: How to Get Everything You Want—Faster Than You Ever Thought Possible" by Brian Tracy

"The 12 Week Year" by Brian P. Moran and Michael Lennington

"Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us" by Daniel H. Pink

"The One Thing" by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan

"Smarter Faster Better" by Charles Duhigg

Relationships and Communication:

"How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie

"The 5 Love Languages" by Gary Chapman

"Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High" by Al Switzler, Joseph Grenny, and Ron McMillan

"Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life" by Marshall B. Rosenberg

"Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus" by John Gray

Self-Help and Personal Growth:

"The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck" by Mark Manson

"Daring Greatly" by Brené Brown

"Awaken the Giant Within" by Tony Robbins

"The Miracle Morning" by Hal Elrod

"You Are a Badass" by Jen Sincero

Science and Popular Science:

"Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind" by Yuval Noah Harari

"The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot

"Cosmos" by Carl Sagan

"A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson

"The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins

Health and Nutrition:

"The China Study" by T. Colin Campbell and Thomas M. Campbell II

"In Defense of Food" by Michael Pollan

"Why We Sleep" by Matthew Walker

"Born to Run" by Christopher McDougall

"The Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan

Fiction and Literature:

"To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee

"1984" by George Orwell

"The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald

"The Catcher in the Rye" by J.D. Salinger

"Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austen

[wraithdance]

What are some books you don’t have, but you wish to read?

I am an impulsive bimbo and I have no self control when it comes to books so most of the time I go read what I want the second I want to. But i have a few on my wishlist (don’t make fun of me I know I’m both a nerd and a weeb)

Nonfiction:

Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome by Joy DeGruy Leary!

I watched a lecture about the concept on YouTube several years ago and I was fascinated by her theories on how repeated traumas like the impacts of slavery/racial abuses could be seen across generations. I’ve always been curious about the concept of epigenetics so this idea of trauma persisting on a cellular level is intriguing. I’ll get too much to yapping about my theories on that tho so moving on!

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

The book is about Henrietta Lacks, the poor black woman whose cells (HeLa) were/are being used in major medical miracles. It covers the groundbreaking medical discoveries and vaccinations (like polio) her cells were used for after her death and the controversy around the fact scientists took her cells while she was dying and without her family’s knowledge.

I tried reading it as a kid because my mom had it but obviously I was not equipped to understand the concept 😭

When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost by Joan Morgan

This was a recommendation to read because one of my favorite feminist theory books is Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women White Feminists Forgot; by Mikki Kendall

(if you’re interested in feminist studies I recommend this book so much, don’t let the title deter you, it goes into class differences for women under the poverty line and motherhood while poor and how mainstream feminism often fails to encompass all female identifying persons. Chefs fucking KISS)

The book delves into the unique brand of feminism that has to be created for black women living in the hood/poverty. It’s something I’m interested in as the intersection of race and poverty defines much of my interests and seems to be the basis of many issues

Fiction/Manga:

Ngl I ran out of steam so no descriptions but I wanna read the Dread Nation zombie series, mashle, Kaijuu no. 8 and a shit ton of other manga and books I don’t have the time for rn 😭

[petervintonjr]

Meet the unsung contributor to revolutionary breakthroughs in treating polio, cancer, HPV, and even COVID-19: Henrietta Lacks. Born in 1920 Roanoke, Virginia, Henrietta's mother Eliza died when she was only four, and she was ultimately raised by her maternal grandfather in Clover, Virginia. Henrietta worked as a tobacco farmer and attended a segregated school until the age of 14, when she gave birth to a son, Lawrence. A daughter, Elsie, was born three years later --to compound the family's difficulties, Elsie had cerebral palsy and epilepsy. Henrietta and her now-husband David Lacks moved to Turner Station (now Dundalk), Maryland where David had landed a job with a nearby steel plant. At the time Turner Station was one of the oldest African-American communities in Baltimore County and there was sufficient community support for the family to buy a house and produce three more children.

In 1951 at the age of 31, Henrietta died at Johns Hopkins Hospital of cervical cancer, mere months after the birth of the family's youngest son. But before her death --and without her or her family's consent-- during a biopsy two tumour cell samples were taken from Henrietta's cervix and sent to Johns Hopkins researchers. Hernietta's cells carried a unique trait: an ability to rapidly multiply, producing a new generation every 24 hours; a breakthrough that no other human cell had achieved. Prior to this discovery, only cells that had been transformed by viruses or genetic mutations carried such a characteristic. With the prospect of now being able to work with what amounted to the first-ever naturally-occurring immortal human cells, researchers created a patent on the HeLa cell line but hid the donor's true identity under a fake name: Helen Lane.

It is no exaggeration to state that in the 70 years since her death, Henrietta's cells have been bought, sold, packaged, and shipped by thousands of laboratories; with her cells being used as a baseline in as many as 74,000 different studies (including some Nobel Prize winners). Her cells have even been sent into space to study the effects of microgravity, and were instrumental in the Human Genome Project. While no actual law (or even a code of ethics) necessarily required doctors to ask permission before taking tissue from a terminal patient, there was a very clear Maryland state law on the books that forbade tissue removal from the dead without permission, throwing the situation into something of a legal grey area. However because Henrietta was poor, minimally educated, and Black, this standard was quietly (and easily) circumvented and she was never recognized for her monumental contributions to science and medicine ...and her family was never compensated. The family remained unaware of Henrietta's contribution until 1975, when the HeLa line's provenance finally became public. Henrietta had been buried in an unmarked grave in the family cemetery in Clover, Virginia but in 2010 a new headstone was donated and dedicated, acknowledging her phenomenal contribution. That same year the John Hopkins Institute for Clinical and Translational Research established a new Henrietta Lacks Memorial lecture series. A statue of Lacks was commissioned in 2022, to be erected in Lacks's birthplace of Roanoke, Virginia --pointedly replacing a previous statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, which had been removed following nationwide protests over the murder of George Floyd.

Dive into The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, originally published in 2011 and subsequently adapted into an HBO movie in 2017, starring Oprah Winfrey as Henrietta's daughter Deborah and Renee Elise Goldberry as Henrietta. (And yes, this book has been challenged and banned in more than one school district.)

[chaoticdesertdweller]

Born Loretta Pleasants in Roanoke, Virginia Henrietta Lacks (August 1920-October 4, 1951) went to live with relatives in Clover, Virginia, after her mother died. In 1951, Henrietta Lacks was diagnosed with cervical cancer. While she was receiving treatment in a segregated ward at the Johns Hopkins University Hospital, researchers took a small piece from Lacks's tumor, without her knowledge, for research purposes.

While experimenting on the sample, scientists observed that Lacks's cells reproduced and thrived outside of her body, a result researchers had unsuccessfully attempted to secure for decades. Lacks died of cancer on October 4, 1951, and was buried in a family cemetery in Clover. The "immortal cells" from Lacks's body continued to grow, and researchers around the world began to conduct experiments with them. Today, billions of HeLa cells are in use in laboratories around the world.

This image is a photo courtesy of the Lacks family and was reprinted from the "Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot.

Learn more about Lacks on her Changemakers webpage at https://edu.lva.virginia.gov/changemakers/items/show/30

[linusjf]

Rebecca Skloot: Immortality

[pinkmoonzzz]

Intro Post

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Hi loves

I'm sam. I am a psych major!

Posting: I write about yellowjackets and twilight on here! Along with moodboards and my thoughts

Some music artists i enjoy: boygenius, ethel cain, hozier, taylor swift, billie eilish, chappell roan, mcr, and ptv

Some of my favorite movies and tv shows are: twilight, yellowjackets, batman, hannibal, juno, and the last of us!

My hobbies: writing, going to the beach, crocheting, building legos, reading, baking, watching films/tv shows, and playing video games.

Current read: Interview With The Vampire by Anne Rice, Red Dragon by Thomas Harris, Hannibal Lector and Philosophy: The Heart of The Matter by Joseph westfall, and the Immortal life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot (this one is for my English class)

Currently watching: Batman: The Animated Series, JJK + the Harry potter movies

links:

Goodreads

Pinterest

letterboxd

spotify

Tags: I'll use samcore for my thoughts and other things

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[mercurygray]

Currently Reading - November 2023

Gosh, it's been a little while since I did one of these!

The Year of Peril: America in 1942 - Tracey Campbell . Found this one at the library booksale just after I finished the 1942 podcast series. The book is excellent so far and really flipping some interesting issues over.

Just Finished Reading:

Millions Like Us: Women's Lives during the Second World War by Virgina Nicolson - This was excellent and I strongly recommend it. I got a lot of inspiration for the end of TDS in it and there's a lot of material that I think will come in handy for MOTA.

Sisters in Arms: British Army Nurses Tell Their Story, by Nicola Tyrer - Another super excellent book that filled in a serious knowledge gap I had about British nursing. Might come in handy for future SAS:RH productions.

An Unladylike Profession: American Women War Correspondents in World War I by Chris Dubbs - This was an impulse purchase on thriftbooks and was very interesting.

The Call of the Wrens, by Jenni Walsh. Fiction. Glad this was only a library book - it was just okay. I'm not a big fan of time jumps as a narrative device - it feels thin.

Cassiel's Servant, by Jacqueline Carey. Fiction. It was really fun to go back to Terre D'Ange for this one, and interesting to see Joscelin's side of things. Realized Joscelin may be why/how I write Dick the way I do.

Ashes under water : the SS Eastland and the shipwreck that shook America, by Michael McCarthy. This was a book club pick that I ended up not being able to join discussion on. A really interesting story, if you're into maritime disasters.

Prisoners of the castle : an epic story of survival and escape from Colditz, the Nazis' fortress prison, by Ben Macintyre. This was on the shelf at the library and I was reading mostly for mentions of David Stirling. Still - very interesting, especially when paired with...

Churchill's Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: The Mavericks Who Plotted Hitler's Defeat, by Giles Milton. This book was fascinating. A lot of backstory behind the stuff that made the war work.

The Immortal life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot. A book club pick that I'm really glad I read.

Just Finished Watching:

Our Miracle Years (Unsere wunderbaren Jahre, Das Erste/PBS) - follows the life of one family in the post-war period. Some good food for thought here.

A Place to Call Home, Season 1 (Foxtel/ Hoopla) - More post-war, this time in Australia, which I started just as something to watch and am now very embroiled in. (Fair warning, this show contains conversation therapy, a miscarriage, and antisemitism, and may probably be triggering for some.)

World On Fire, Season 2 (BBC/PBS) - I came, I brought my Passport subscription, I tried...and after all six episodes I still don't like this show. I don't feel like we spend enough time with any of the characters to really appreciate them. It feels like everyone's there to make a point.

Outlander Season 7 (STARZ) - This was just fun. I'm not a huge fan of the books, but the TV series is really enjoyable for me.

Captain Horatio Hornblower (1951) - This has been on my list for a while and it popped up recently on Hoopla. I like Peck's nervousness in the role.

Dalgliesh, Season 2 (Acorn/Hoopla) - Bertie Carvel continues to do great in this role. I kind of wish there was a crossover involving him and Morse.

To Walk Invisible (BBC/ PBS)- It was really fun to watch this back to back with Emily.

Emily (2022) - Getting two mostly recent takes on the Bronte sisters so close together was really interesting.

Farewell My Queen (2012) - watched this while on vacation in Williamsburg. A nice 18th century drama.

[sasha4books]

Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture by Ytasha L. Womack

Kraken by A. Andiron

Moore Zombies: Gimme Noodle! by Wendy Knuth

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

What Was the Plague? by Roberta Edwards

The Last Voyage of the Andrea Doria: The Sinking of the World's Most Glamorous Ship by Greg King

Santa Overboard: A Potomac Shores Holiday (Potomac Shores, #2) by Carolyn McBride

What Is the Story of Nancy Drew? by Dana M. Rau

The Lost World (Professor Challenger, #1) by Arthur Conan Doyle

Lesson in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

The Month Keeper by Kay O'Neill

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

Who Was Marco Polo? by Joan Holub

[theaverageextrovert]

Day two of trying to include more academia in my day to day life: reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot while I bake under my SAD lamp

[monstersflashlight]

Oooh book talk book talk book talk!!!!! Im actually in school to get a master's degree in library science rn in part bc I want to do everything I can to spend my life around books and readers! My favorite books include:

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (Rebecca Skloot) Nonfiction about the history of the cell culture HeLa that was removed from a black woman with a unique cervical cancer without her consent or her family's knowledge. Goes into the medical ethics questions of who owns a piece of tissue after it's been removed and how can we reconcile scientific progress made when it comes at a very real, very high human cost, especially to certain groups of people (in this case a poor black woman and her family). It's also a story about the woman herself, what little is known for sure about her and how her family has tried to understand who she was and what happened to her, all while grieving for her loss. If you like medical history and don't mind harsh subjects, it is a really really good read.

This Is How You Lose The Time War (Max Gladstone and Amal El-Mohtar) sci-fi novella telling the story of two agents from warring factions with the power of time travel, each of them trying to outwit the other to secure the best future for their faction while maintaining their cat and mouse game. They become completely intertwined and fall in love (without spoilers, a really cool take on the idea of fated lovers, imo), all through sending letters to each other and it's a short read but so poignant and dazzling.

Stories of Your Life and Others (Ted Chiang) more sci-fi, this time a short story collection. Includes the short story that was the basis for the movie Arrival. (Does it count as a monster book if there are aliens? Because there are aliens, but there's no romance with them or anything like that). Can't really give a succinct summary when there are a bunch of different stories but I think my personal favorite in this collection is "Hell is the Absence of God". A world in which the presence of heaven, hell, god, and angels are very real tangible forces and how a select group of people in that world grapple with what that means for their faith. Do I love this story bc I also have a complicated relationship with faith? Probably! But it's a great collection regardless!

Hope you get lots of good book rec's! <3

Hi anon! I've been thinking about getting into library sicence myself, but not yet though. But I find it very interesting.

I've actually read the first book you mentioned and it was great, really good book. You can say I like medical history, lmao (for context I'm getting my PhD in that field). I've heard of the second one you suggest, but I've also heard it's really tragic (not sure if it's true), so I don't know about that because I like more cozy, happy-ending books, but it's been on my TBR for a looooong time. Someday I'll read it. The third one I didn't know, added to the TBR. :) All very interesting choices.