This year’s Fogelson Honors Forum, set for next week, brings further understanding to a topic that’s been a focus ever since this year’s Common Reading was announced … bioethics. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, a current bestseller by Rebecca Skloot, has been read and discussed by faculty and students across campus.

 

Dr. Ruth Faden, professor of Biomedical Ethics at Johns Hopkins University, will discuss “The Biography in Bioethics” at 6 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 5 in the BLUU ballroom. After a brief lecture from Faden, Dr. Phil Hartman (Biology) will lead a discussion with three members of the Lacks family, descendants of the book’s central figure.

 

Henrietta Lacks, whom scientists knew as “HeLa,” was a poor black tobacco farmer whose cells—taken without her knowledge in 1951—became one of the most important tools in medicine, vital for developing the polio vaccine, cloning, gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, and more. Henrietta’s cells have been bought and sold by the billions, yet she remains virtually unknown, and her family can’t afford health insurance. It’s a story inextricably connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we’re made of.

 

The event is free but reservations are necessary. Go to www.fogelson.tcu.edu or call ext. 3993.