A San Diego science and education alliance has launched “The Henrietta Lacks Project: A Community Exploration of Science, Ethics and Diversity.” This unprecedented regional series of events will examine research ethics and diversity issues through the platform of the bestselling book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot.
Spanning the 2011-2012 academic year from September through June, “The Henrietta Lacks Project” will involve six universities and colleges – San Diego State University, the University of San Diego, California State University San Marcos, Point Loma Nazarene University, Grossmont College, and UC San Diego – in leading a public discussion of the riveting story of Lacks, an African-American cancer patient whose cells were used for research without her knowledge. The coalition also includes the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center, the San Diego-based Center for Ethics in Science and Technology (Ethics Center), and CONNECT. Educators from the San Diego Unified School District will offer special curricular programs, and area K-12 students will be invited to participate in activities throughout the county.
All participating institutions will stage multiple satellite events. To provide a community focus for all of these institutions, the Ethics Center will devote nine of its monthly “Exploring Ethics” public forums at the Fleet Center to a special “Henrietta Lacks Series.” A high point of the series, which is coordinated with the Initiative for Moral Courage at SDSU, will be a November 2 lecture by Rebecca Skloot.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks chronicles the true story of how cervical cancer cells taken from Lacks were used without her permission to produce a human cell line for research purposes. Officially labeled “HeLa” cells, Lacks’ cell line was so resilient and bountiful that it is still being used for medical research 60 years after her death in 1951. HeLa cells have been instrumental in studying cancer, polio, radiation sickness, gene mapping, and a range of other areas.
The book, Skloot’s first, has won widespread acclaim and numerous awards, including the Wellcome Trust Book Prize and the Heartland Prize. It was ranked among the “Top 10 Books of 2010 “by Publisher’s Weekly and among the “100 Notable Books of the Year” by The New York Times. “We are tremendously excited about this first-of-a-kind series and the opportunities that it
presents for dynamic public engagement about science,” said Ethics Center Director Michael Kalichman, who also directs the UC San Diego Research Ethics Program. “San Diego is the perfect place to stage such an ambitious series, and the story of Henrietta Lacks is the ideal catalyst for it.”
For further information, visit http://www.ethicscenter.net/ or http://www.openlearningcommons.com/.
