VCU Presents Science, Technology and Society Lecture Series

By Malorie Burkett

Virginia Commonwealth University's College of Humanities and Sciences presents the 2007-08 "Science, Technology and Society" Lecture Series.

Free and open to the public, the three-part lecture series will take place Fridays, Feb. 29 and March 28, at noon in the University Student Commons Forum Room, 907 Floyd Ave., and on Thursday, April 10, at 7 p.m. in the MedicalSciencesBuilding Auditorium, on the MCV Campus, 1217 E. Marshall St.

The first lecture, "Colored Bodies: Ethical Consideration in the Case of Henrietta Lacks," will be presented by Charlene Gilbert, professor and director of the Catherine S. Eberly Center for Women at the University of Toledo.

Gilbert will focus on bioethics in the research on HeLa Cells, named for Henrietta Lacks and used in research today without her or her families' consent. Lacks died of cervical cancer in 1951, and her cancer cells were the first known human cells to live and multiply outside of the human body.    

The second lecture, "The Desegregation of Southern Medical Education: Edith Irby Goes to Medical School," will be presented by Vanessa Northington Gamble, M.D., Ph.D., professor of medical humanities at George Washington University.

Gamble's lecture concentrates on the history of race and racism in American medicine, particularly the racial and ethnic disparities faced by Edith Irby – the first African American female graduate of a southern medical school.       

The final lecture, "A Post-Genomic Surprise: The Molecular Reinscription of Race in Clinical Medicine and Forensic Science," will be presented by Troy Duster, Ph.D., professor at New York University.

Duster's lecture will explore new forensic science practices coupled with policies on healthcare and the possibility of new forms of racial taxonomy through DNA research.

For more information contact John Powers at (804) 828-1736 or jcpowers@vcu.edu.