Catalog Search Results
Author
Language
English
Description
Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer, yet her cells--taken without her knowledge--became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first "immortal" human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer and viruses; helped lead to in vitro...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
When the vast wartime factories of the Manhattan Project began producing plutonium in quantities never before seen on earth, scientists working on the top-secret bomb-building program grew apprehensive. Fearful that plutonium might cause a cancer epidemic among workers and desperate to learn more about what it could do to the human body, the Manhattan Project's medical doctors embarked upon an experiment in which eighteen unsuspecting patients
...Author
Language
English
Description
The first comprehensive history of medical experimentation on African Americans. Starting with the earliest encounters between Africans and Western medical researchers and the racist pseudoscience that resulted, it details the way both slaves and freedmen were used in hospitals for experiments conducted without a hint of informed consent--a tradition that continues today within some black populations. It shows how the pseudoscience of eugenics and...
12) Behind the sheet
Author
Language
English
Description
An important medical breakthrough has a shameful history. In 1840's Alabama, a slave-owning doctor performs medical experiments on involuntary subjects - enslaved women - in an effort to solve the problem of fistulas, a post-childbirth anomaly. As the experiments proceed, and he gets close to a solution, the women try to survive and even find dignity in the face of inhuman treatment.
Includes conversations with playwright Charly Evon Simpson and...
Author
Language
English
Description
"The epic and controversial story of a major breakthrough in cell biology that led to the creation of some of the world's most important vaccines. Until the late 1960s, tens of thousands of American children suffered crippling birth defects if their mothers had been exposed to rubella, popularly known as German measles, while pregnant; there was no vaccine and little understanding of how the disease devastated fetuses. In June 1962, a young biologist...
Author
Language
English
Description
"In 1846, a young surgeon, J. Marion Sims ("The Father of Gynecology"), began several years of experimental surgeries on a young enslaved woman known as Anarcha ("The Mother of Gynecology"). This series of procedures-performed without anesthesia and resulting in Anarcha's so-called "cure"-forever altered the path of women's health. Despite brutal practices and failed techniques, Sims proclaimed himself the curer of obstetric fistula, a horrific condition...
20) Push
Language
English
Description
Nick is a 'mover' - someone who can move things with his mind. He meets up with Cassie who is a 'watcher' - someone who can predict the future. She is trying to rescue her mother from the government. As they try to piece things together, Kira enters their lives. Kira is a 'pusher' - someone who can influence the thoughts of others. She has had a relationship with Nick and is the only person to survive a powerful 'enhancement' drug that was administered...