Focus

Encore: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

 
Listen (Duration: 55:01)
Download

She was a poor black tobacco farmer whose cells—taken without her knowledge in 1951—would become one of the most important tools of modern medicine, used to develop the polio vaccine, gene mapping, cloning, and more. Today on Focus, Rebecca Skloot joins the show to tell the story of Henrietta Lacks, the medical revolution that she unknowingly launched, and the ethics one must consider when it comes to our bodies and medicine.

Guest: Rebecca Skloot (award-winning science writer; author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks).

Host: David Inge.

This is a repeat broadcast from Monday, March 22, 2010, 11 AM.