The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Image courtesy of Williams Reads.
Image courtesy of Williams Reads.

This year, the Fund is co-sponsoring much of the programming around the Williams Reads book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, including a visit to campus by two Lacks family members on Feb. 11-12 and a campus visit by the distinguished bioethicist Ruth Faden in the spring.

The public event and Q&A will be held Wednesday, February 11 at 8:00 PM on the Main Stage at the 62 Center for Theater and Dance. The event is free but tickets are required and can be reserved here.

Please look at the event page for more details.

Lacks Family Visit Video.  Two Lacks family members visited campus as part of the programming around the Williams Reads book “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.” In celebrating her legacy, family members give the audience a first-person perspective on the collision between ethics, race and the commercialization of human tissue, and how the experience changed the Lacks family from generation to generation.

Family Shares Lacks’s Legacy.  Members of the Lacks family visited the College as part of the Williams Reads program last Wednesday and Thursday. The book for this year’s Williams Reads program was The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, a non-fiction piece about Henrietta Lacks and HeLa, the immortal line of cells that came from her cervical cancer cells. David Lacks Jr. and Shirley Lacks, Henrietta Lacks’s grandson and daughter-in-law, respectively, visited the College and gave a presentation at the ’62 Center for Theatre and Dance, followed by a moderated discussion led by Olivia Polk ’16. They also visited several classes to participate in discussion on a smaller scale.