Author: Sandra Prlenda File Type: pdf

Author: Rebecca Skloot File Type: mobi Amazon.com ReviewThe 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, Henriettas 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 _hr Amazon Exclusive Jad Abumrad Reviews The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks Jad Abumrad is host and creator of the public radio hit Radiolab, now in its seventh season and reaching over a million people monthly. Radiolab combines cutting-edge production with a philosophical approach to big ideas in science and beyond, and an inventive method of storytelling. Abumrad has won numerous awards, including a National Headliner Award in Radio and an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Science Journalism Award. Read his exclusive Amazon guest review of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks Honestly, I cant imagine a better tale.A detective story thats at once mythically large and painfully intimate.Just the simple facts are hard to believe that in 1951, a poor black woman named Henrietta Lacks dies of cervical cancer, but pieces of the tumor that killed her--taken without her knowledge or consent--live on, first in one lab, then in hundreds, then thousands, then in giant factories churning out polio vaccines, then aboard rocket ships launched into space. The cells from this one tumor would spawn a multi-billion dollar industry and become a foundation of modern science--leading to breakthroughs in gene mapping, cloning and fertility and helping to discover how viruses work and how cancer develops (among a million other things). All of which is to say the science end of this story is enough to blow ones mind right out of ones face.But whats truly remarkable about The book ultimately channels its journey of discovery though Henriettas youngest daughter, Deborah, who never knew her mother, and who dreamt of one day being a scientist.As Deborah Lacks and Skloot search for answers, were bounced effortlessly from the tiny tobacco-farming Virginia hamlet of Henriettas childhood to modern-day Baltimore, where Henriettas family remains. Along the way, a series of unforgettable juxtapositions cell culturing bumps into faith healings, cutting edge medicine collides with the dark truth that Henriettas family cant afford the health insurance to care for diseases their mothers cells have helped to cure.Rebecca Skloot tells the story with great sensitivity, urgency and, in the end, damn fine writing. I highly recommend this book. --Jad Abumradhr Look Inside The Immortal Life of Henrietta LacksClick on thumbnails for larger imageshr Henrietta and David Lacks, circa 1945. Elsie Lacks, Henriettas older daughter, about five years before she was committed to Crownsville State Hospital, with a diagnosis of idiocy. Deborah Lacks at about age four. The home-house where Henrietta was raised, a four-room log cabin in Clover, Virginia, that once served as slave quarters. (1999) Main Street in downtown Clover, Virginia, where Henrietta was raised, circa 1930s.hr Margaret Gey and Minnie, a lab technician, in the Gey lab at Hopkins, circa 1951. Deborah with her children, LaTonya and Alfred, and her second husband, James Pullum, in the mid-1980s. In 2001, Deborah developed a severe case of hives after learning upsetting new information about her mother and sister. Deborah and her cousin Gary Lacks standing in front of drying tobacco, 2001. The Lacks family in 2009.hr From Publishers WeeklyStarred Review. Science journalist Skloot makes a remarkable debut with this multilayered story about faith, science, journalism, and grace. It is also a tale of medical wonders and medical arrogance, racism, poverty and the bond that grows, sometimes painfully, between two very different womenSkloot and Deborah Lackssharing an obsession to learn about Deborahs mother, Henrietta, and her magical, immortal cells. Henrietta Lacks was a 31-year-old black mother of five in Baltimore when she died of cervical cancer in 1951. Without her knowledge, doctors treating her at Johns Hopkins took tissue samples from her cervix for research. They spawned the first viable, indeed miraculously productive, cell lineknown as HeLa. These cells have aided in medical discoveries from the polio vaccine to AIDS treatments. What Skloot so poignantly portrays is the devastating impact Henriettas death and the eventual importance of her cells had on her husband and children. Skloots portraits of Deborah, her father and brothers are so vibrant and immediate they recall Adrian Nicole LeBlancs Random Family. Writing in plain, clear prose, Skloot avoids melodrama and makes no judgments. Letting people and events speak for themselves, Skloot tells a rich, resonant tale of modern science, the wonders it can perform and how easily it can exploit societys most vulnerable people. (Feb.) br Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc.

Author: Nick Estes File Type: epub In 2016, a small protest encampment at the Standing Rock reservation in North Dakota, initially established to block construction of the Dakota Access oil pipeline, grew to be the largest Indigenous protest movement in the twenty-first century, attracting tens of thousands of Indigenous and non-Native allies from around the world. Its slogan Mni Wiconi--Water is Life--was about more than just a pipeline. Water Protectors knew this battle for Native sovereignty had already been fought many times before, and that, even after the encampment was gone, their anti-colonial struggle would continue. In Our History is the Future, Nick Estes traces traditions of Indigenous resistance leading to the #NoDAPL movement from the days of the Missouri River trading forts through the Indian Wars, the Pick-Sloan dams, the American Indian Movement, and the campaign for Indigenous rights at the United Nations. While a historian by trade, Estes also draws on observations from the encampments and from growing up as a citizen of the Oceti Sakowin (the Nation of the Seven Council Fires), making Our History is the Future at once a work of history, a personal story, and a manifesto--

Author: Susan Mulcahy File Type: pdf An intimate, irreverent look at a gossip columnists daily routines and rituals reveals how information is uncovered and what it is like to pursue the inside story