New York Times:
Last week, scientists sequenced the genome of cells taken without consent from a woman named Henrietta Lacks. She was a black tobacco farmer and mother of five, and though she died in 1951, her cells, code-named HeLa, live on. They were used to help develop our most important vaccines and cancer medications, in vitro fertilization, gene mapping, cloning. Now they may finally help create laws to protect her family’s privacy — and yours.
I read the original book, “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” (Amazon referral) and it tells a fascinating story of medicine and ethics.
My son’s college basically makes reading that book mandatory. It’s used in several different classes from different perspectives. The intent, however, is diversity awareness. My wife read it and said it was absolutely fascinating and sad.
There is also a documentary about Henrietta Lacks from 1997 made by Adam Curtis called “The Way of All Flesh” that is worth seeing (as are all his films). It’s available on Archive.org.
Sorry, that link doesn’t take you to the video, but this will: http://archive.org/details/AdamCurtisTheWayofAllFlesh
If you haven’t seen any of Adam Curtis’ films before, I would start with “Century of the Self” and work forwards, but they’re pretty much all worth seeing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Curtis