Brain Snacks: Tasty Tidbits of Knowledge
Here's an assignment you probably won't mind: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks has been selected for Common Reading at 150 universities. We're pretty sure it will help you start a conversation with your roommates, even if they insist on walking around the dorm room in their underwear. (Source)
Think investigative reporting doesn't change the world? The archives from Crownsville State Hospital, where Elsie Lacks died in 1955, have recently been released to the public. (Source)
Rebecca Skloot, despite her claim NOT to be an activist, started The Henrietta Lacks Foundation, to help the Lacks family and others who have been injured by unethical experimentation. Although it's awarded 42 grants so far, big donations from institutions like Hopkins haven't appeared as Skloot had hoped. We're looking at you, Koch brothers. (Source)
If you can believe it, the NIH still has a hard time understanding the concept of informed consent. But Skloot is on the job. She called the NIH out when they attempted to publish Henrietta's sequenced genome and now she's helped the Lacks family to negotiate to keep the information more private. (Source)