Friday 11, 19.00-21.00 & Saturday 12 February 2011, 10.30-17.30
Victorian Britain: a global Empire and a culture awash with drugs. Opium, morphine, cocaine and cannabis are on sale in every high-street pharmacy.
http://www.wellcomecollection.org/whats-on/events/drugs-in-victorian-britain.aspx
The second Wellcome Trust Book Prize has been won by Rebecca Skloot for her book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. The result was announced at an awards reception at Wellcome Collection in November. The book tells the story of a poor tobacco farmer whose cancer cells, taken without her knowledge, became one of the most important tools in medicine.
This debut work by Rebecca Skloot took a decade to chronicle, and weaves together the Lacks's family story from the first culturing of HeLa cells (as they became known) to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans and the birth of bioethics.
HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine and uncovering data about cancer, viruses and the effects of the atom bomb. They helped lead to important advances, such as in vitro fertilisation, cloning and gene mapping, and have been bought and sold by the billions. Henrietta herself, however, remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave. Today, her family can't afford the heathcare advances that their mother's cells helped to make possible.
Launched in 2009, the £25 000 Prize highlights outstanding works of fiction and non-fiction on the theme of health, illness or medicine. The 2011 Prize is now open for submissions. (Wellcome News, 2010. – № 65. – P. 3)
http://www.wellcome.ac.uk www.wellcomebookprize.org
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