As we do in the study, Skloot notes that besides media coverage, many classroom, campus and other public forum discussions of the book have taken place, and these discussions are also important to analyze and evaluate in future research.
![the immortal life of henrietta lacks on netflix the immortal life of henrietta lacks on netflix](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/tvxbo5Vy2fE/maxresdefault.jpg)
![the immortal life of henrietta lacks on netflix the immortal life of henrietta lacks on netflix](https://worldtruth.tv/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/henrietta-lacks-hela-cells.jpg)
On Twitter, Skloot has already started a welcome discussion of the study, the nature of media coverage and the broader impact for the book. Following the abstract is the discussion and conclusion to the study. Given the importance of the media to how the broader public understands the nature of bioethics and biobanks specifically, along with the special role that best-selling science authors and communicators like Skloot can play in reaching wider audiences and stimulating media debate, the purpose of our study was to systematically evaluate the ethical themes emphasized in reviews, profiles, commentaries, stories and features specific to Skloot’s book.īelow is the abstract to the study summarizing our methods and findings and an early version is available open-access online. Yet the story presented by Skloot had the potential to generate a broader discussion in the media and among the public about the ethical concerns related to biobanks and tissue research, a discussion that Skloot admirably attempted to generate in media interviews, in the afterward to her book, and in prominent freelance articles.īest-selling authors and journalistic commentators like Skloot “provide not only the facts but also the formats, norms, and rhetorics that citizens employ to develop their opinions and enter wider discussion,” conclude sociologists Ronald Jacobs and Eleanor Townsley in their recent book The Space of Opinion: Media Intellectuals and the Public Sphere. “Studying who these communicators are and what cultural practices they use in their debates is just as important as identifying the range of relevant facts that news media do or do not provide.” Similarly, several decades of research in communication and related social science fields has emphasized the unique influence that journalists can have in framing the relevance of complex, science-related subjects and in shaping public judgments and decisions about why an issue might be a problem, who or what is responsible and what should be done. In addition, many biobanks do not use tissues removed during medical procedures, as was the case with Henrietta Lacks. Most biobanks today collect finite amounts of tissue, very few of which are made into “immortal” cell lines as was the case with the HeLa cells documented in Skloot’s book.