2023 Kelly Lecture Series: Science Journalist Rebecca Skloot and Members of the Lacks Family
Venue: Haymarket Theater (Squires), Blacksburg
Directions: Google Map Link
Date: Tuesday, April 11, 2023
Time: 2:00 - 3:00 PM
Event Types: Speaking Engagements
Cost: Free
The Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science at Virginia Tech presents the 2023 Kelly Lecture Series with Author Rebecca Skloot and members of the Lacks Family on Tuesday, April 11, 2023 inside the Haymarket Theater located within the Squires Student Center on the campus of Virginia Tech.
Author Rebecca Skloot will be joined by two members of the Lacks family to tell the story of the Black cancer patient whose cells revolutionized medical research but raise troubling questions about bias and consent.
She was born Loretta Pleasant. For most of her life, she was known as Henrietta Lacks. Since the 1950s, generations of cell biologists have known her — mostly without being aware of it — as HeLa, the nickname for the line of cells that inaugurated a new era in medical research.
The medical odyssey that made Lacks’ cells a cornerstone of modern medicine, chronicled in Rebecca Skloot’s 2010 bestseller "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks," is a stunning object lesson in informed consent and bioethics and a sobering chapter in the long, shameful history of racial inequity and exploitation in medicine.
Skloot, along with Shirley Lacks and Jeri Lacks Whye, will tell Lacks’ story and explore the troubling historical and ethical questions woven through it in a lecture on Virginia Tech’s Blacksburg campus.
Sloot’s work, which covers topics from food politics to the intersection of race and medicine, has been featured in The New York Times and on National Public Radio, CBS Sunday Morning, the podcast "Radiolab," and numerous other outlets. She has been recognized with awards from organizations including the National Academies of Science, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Wellcome Trust.
Admission is free though registration is requsted.
To register online, visit: https://virginiatech.questionpro.com/a/TakeSurvey?tt=R0YKPZIe2KEECHrPeIW9eQ%3D%3D.
Haymarket Theater is located within the Squires Student Center and is located at 290 College Avenue in Blacksburg, VA on the campus of Virginia Tech.
For more information, visit: https://ictas.vt.edu/outreach/kellylecture.html or https://vtx.vt.edu/articles/2023/03/ictas-skloot-kelly-lecture.html.
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