much as it is against war itself, and i wish you were right. >> perhaps you could take one more question. we know you have a busy afternoon and we want to leave time for you to sign some books. >> on the isle. the yes, you. >> on the issue, back to the issue of-- if you look back in december of 2008, the commission, we put out a report on cybersecurity and talked about that. we talked about the need for public-private cooperation. melissa put out her report a couple months later and you have the president a year ago to the day talking about cybersecurity. granted they have had a few things distracting them, but do you see any likelihood that cybersecurity will become a more prevalent issue, and if so when? >> there have been cybersecurity presidential commissions

beginning in 1996, and they have all been very good. and most of what they have suggested hasn't been done. the 2008 report, it took president bush until his last year in office to get around to actually having a plan that he funded and acted on. the bush plan in 2008, the comprehensive national cyberinitiative, cnci had 12 points as you know. none of those 12 points were designed to protect anything except the government. ..

as you can say and not get out of this firm of life having said the word regulation. but regulation of the internet itself, the internet service providers it's going to take regulation on the electric power companies more so than the regulation that's already been passed because that regulation has no teeth, and all of those decisions are going to take courage and a lot of political

skill to get them done so that we can begin to defend ourselves in cyberspace. unfortunately the way the united states tends to work is we don't get around to doing these things even though we have been warned that the attacks are coming. we don't usually get around to doing anything about them until the attacks took place. i hope that this book will contribute perhaps to the dialogue that's been going on so that the dialogue will get large enough and loud enough it might actually solve this problem before the disaster. thanks. [applause] >> thank you so much, richard we know that you have a full schedule. think you for joining this afternoon. we are trying to put on hot topics in the panel and bring

people in contemporary issues. thank you. have a good afternoon. >> richard clarke served in the white house for president ronald reagan and both george h. w. bush and george w. bush and for president clinton as national coordinator for security infrastructure protection and counterterrorism. he teaches at harvard kennedy school of government and consults for abc news and as chairman of harvard consultant. for more information, visit richardaclarke.net. from the to the listened and "los angeles times" festival of books, charles bowden, author of "murder city." this is 25 minutes. >> as you can see the c-span school bus or the c-span boss is of the l.a. times festival on the campusf ucla and we are now joined for the next

half-hour by author charles bowden whose most recent book is this, "murder city" is what it is called. charles bowden, where is juarez mexico? >> guest: directly. >> host: what is it like? >> guest: historical after nafta passed it was a boom town of the foreign factor is probably 1.5 million people. today it is a city of jobs. the last three years there's been 5,000 executions. january 1st of this year there's been 775 executions. 100,000 jobs are left down because of the recession. 25% of the houses have been abandoned because of fear. 40% of the businesses closed because of the danger and robbery, extortion and murder. i don't know if cities true

leadoff a but this city looks to be dying. >> host: how did that happen? >> guest: it was a combination of factors. i will give a short course. the city always had violence, always had poverty. but now starting in december, 2006 the president of mexico felipe calderon was a strong man unleashed the mexican army on the drug industry. that was a tipping point. murders suddenly started going up, 200-7307 murders. in 2008, 1660 vendors. in 2009, 2753 murders. coupled with that is something that was going to happen anyway. they were basically american-owned factories and planted under the free trade policy that created a serious of

serious policy that waged 50 to 75 week and serious violence because you had all of these. you have to understand anwar is there's a high school for every 500,000 people. these high schools are not free. 50% of the adolescents now in a harness neither are in school or do they have jobs. there's 500 to 900 street gangs. these are not affinity groups or clubs. these are armed groups. one has 3,000 members. so when cal durham on least this for mechem drugs which i don't think is real but when he unleashed it, the violence started erupting and now it's erupting over large areas of mexico and you can't get the genie back in the well because it is fundamental contradictions in mexico that came to the surface.

the sinking economy, miserable wages, lack of human rights, totally corrupt government police and army. now a growing out of the drug war, since he initiated it, 23,000 mexicans have been slaughtered. since he initiated it, the army fighting what he says is a drug cartel only about 100 soldiers have died. this is a kind of strange war anybody that knows about war. the reality is mexico is dependent on the drug money. drug money according to the dea earns 30 to 50 billion a year in the currency. the second largest source of the foreign currency or remittances rather than to ten to 15 million mexicans working illegally in the u.s.. they are far greater than that. the final thing is the oil fields are declining. the president of mexico, the

current one shall be exhausted in nine years. that's 40% of the federal budget right there. they have a recipe for a society that is eroding and you can see it. each day the president of mexico, the army, the federal police control less and less of the country. each day our united states government says we will support you but we are fighting a conflict or we are engaged in a conflict we are not going to win. >> host: who is being murdered? >> guest: poor people. the u.s.-mexican and mexican government says 90% are dirty meaning they are drug related. that's a lot. 90% of the dead are nobody's with and in poor houses with nothing. you can make the claim -- >> host: then why are they being murdered? >> guest: because it is a war for drugs. 15 years ago there were very few

addicts and for example in juarez. now clinicians say there's 150 to 200,000 meaning it's like the television program the wire. every corner now is worth money. there are thousands of places selling drugs. drugs are cheap. the second thing is simply poverty that the united states will not face its trade program hasn't produced well when president bill clinton and george lagat asked he said it would and illegal immigration and rise the standard of living in mexico. that is not true. we are looking at the largest human migration on earth now. the flight of the mexican force into the united states to east cape duma. >> host: 202 is the area code, 585-3885 if you live in the east and central time zone. if you talk to charles bowden

whose recent book is "murder city." fight 85386 if you live in a mountain or pacific time zone. why do you include the term global economy in the subtitle? >> guest: because moraes is essentially the poster child for our trade policies starting in the late 60's it had border assembly plants implemented. after nafta everything arrived. falcon cleaners are now made in juarez, car parts are made their. if you make 50 to 75 week in juarez this is what you will get paid in these factories. the cost of living is 90% the same as the u.s.. there's no way to live from these wages. the plans on average have a turnover of unemployment of 100 to 200% a year. it grinds people up. they had no provision for living wages.

nafta was passed without any environmental controls. nafta was passed without any protection for union organizers. these are essentially slave masters and nobody will admit and then they wonder why people get violent of violence was sam initiative against drugs but the underlying anger and despair was there. >> host: if you want to send a tweet, twitter.com/booktv. is this all about marijuana? >> guest: marijuana, cocaine, heroin. i was talking to one of the guys in the leadership position in february of 2008. he's also a contract killer. i said how much would it cost for me to get here and today?

$2.50 u.s. the poor are using drugs and juarez. the people working there are using cocaine. you can go into the forest to the promised looking corner store to people selling cocaine. so what's all the drugs. huge domestic market now in mexico not just on the order to become a bore. is a little over the country increasingly because then you don't have to export, then you don't have to bribe a u.s. customs you get your truck load through and cost operations and replace with the volume to read there was a study done two years ago by an academic from the university of california whose name i can't remember at the moment where he found there were 25,000 retail outlets in tijuana. this was a thing on spoken. now the viewers should think about what is the format on

drugs? i mean what is the premise of the war that says you can get drugs but you can't have other substances? what is the motive behind creating the highest per capita prison population in the world which the united states has? it was lost decades ago and lost as the american people don't support it. they use drugs. these mexicans are not bringing drugs for rare aerobic exercise. they are bringing them here for market. it didn't come from sweden it came from mexico or south america. this is a burr against our own people and a broad product is in 36 months slaughtered 23,000 africans. >> host: charles bowden is the author, "murder city" is the book. and hearst new york, you're on the air. >> caller: my question for mr. bowden is how much of a factor does he feel is

corruption within law enforcement in this country with regard to drugs? how much of a factor is that in the problem of the drugs coming in from mexico? >> host: mr. bowden? >> guest: that is a really good question mexico is corrupt. that's part of the system. but i watch as i have friends in the border patrol. i know people at the customs. what the war has done is increasingly corrupt theft. if you are in the border patrol say after five years you are making 75 grand a year and you know your job is a failure every day most of the people are getting through so what is the difference if you take $100 a head and with a truckload go through? what we are taking a basically decent americans largely from small communities recruited into

these agencies than giving them the task that is to pile and then putting them of cessation. i interviewed a cartel member in juarez and he had been running for years marijuana across the bridge without losing a load because he paid people and left customs. suggested perhaps us. let's see unmentionable subject. nobody in these agencies. you could watch in the agency's the growing distrust between the people of the agency. >> host: how is it that you were still alive after reporting this? >> guest: if i ever heard anybody as much as i wanted to i would be dead. >> host: who do you want to hurt? >> guest: i want to destroy the people running the drug industry. i will be honest i would legalize drugs but that doesn't mean i want to get 30 to

$50 billion a year to a bunch of gangsters. i also want to read feel we are running sleeve tax reserves the american people have been sold a bill of goods. i work for a living and i know what kind of pay you needed. you can't expect people to be happy and stay in mexico when they can't survive on the wages. >> host: franklin tennessee. please go ahead with your question for charles bowden. >> caller: yes i think one of the things you have with illegal drugs is the fact you have a risk premium built into the price so you already have built in the enormous profits. if you totally decriminalize drugs would remove the risk premium and the prices would go down and when prices go down producers leave the market. government all over the world of prices and the metaphor of the war whether the war on poverty or on drugs or that because that is the way they like a great

palace on to themselves. but i have to disagree with mr. bowden. mexican wages have been going up about 15% a year since nafta was enacted. and i will listen to his comments. >> caller: >> guest: well, we have a disagreement. even if wages go up to have the factor of inflation in the mid 80's it was the peso. legalizing drugs or criminalizing drugs our society loves. whenever legalized gambling. we've renamed it calling it the lottery. drugs are jongh -- junk. the only reason they're profitable as they are evil. the government and 70's had to studies on marijuana, one study said it would be the price of lettuce and the others it would be the price of watermelon was

the difference. what we have now is a vested interest in the illegal drugs -- narcotics officers. we have a bunch of prisons increasingly private. the prison guards union is big. we have a therapy industry. we buy committed investment that in the being illegal but actually it would break down because we can't afford to make them illegal. what we've done is take a public health problem and made it a police problem. nobody likes saying we have too much heart disease and instead of sending doctors sending copps. this is a waste of money and time. we've proven that. we haven't gotten rid of drugs and all. almost every drug and the cost of dollars cheaper now, more distributed and higher quality than in 1975. >> host: eight week from joe. charles bowden is right. a part of the latter is one man

killing another man what substance is he may use and fighting over it. how does the arizonan immigration bill play into all of this? you live in tucson. >> guest: ayman in arizona. the arizonan immigration bill cannot be enforced. they don't have enough jail for one. every police force in the state has come out against it. number two, it will make it impossible to investigate a lot of crime. police now can move freely through the neighborhoods that are full of illegal mexicans because the illegal mexicans know if somebody asks about a murder they are going to be deported. that is off the table now. so this law was passed for domestic political reasons. was passed so the governor could live that there is no legislature. i lived there most of my life. john mccain endorsed it because he's in a relatively

tight republican primary but will not influence illegal immigration any more than fill wall on the border. people have to understand that right now and the border where i live it's about $3,000 to hire a smuggler to get you across to chicago. if you get to chicago you will make a real wage and pay that off in a couple of months. people in hong kong and places are paying to become paying 30 grand in shipping containers. that's the market value of being here. this isn't going to stop all of the walls donner and all of the border patrol's. although the laws have done is create a bonus for people. -- a brazillian for example is $10,000 to make it to san antonio or dallas.

you can't deal with a human tidal wave in the world that seems to be sinking with fees' laws. they are not going to come here. if they want to come here they need a national i.d. so they couldn't possibly live here. but i understand any republican or democrat stand up to the plate on that one. this isn't a homeland security issue unless you're an economist these people are coming to work here whether you like it or not. they are not coming here to blow up your house your coming to remodel, the adjust working poor people. >> host: less vegas, good afternoon. >> caller: what about all of the cops for illegals, i heard with 13 kills and delete the thousand or killed each year but also what about the welfare cost of the people the way they are screwing up the hospitals and

the majority are on welfare. the american taxpayer paying for their children to be born. it seems like we are ignoring a tremendous amount of negative stuff these people bring -- >> host: we got the point. go ahead. >> guest: okay, look it is a fair point by no hospitals in southern arizona are going to the ball taking care of illegals because they had the craddock oath to show up there not with a to take that seriously ill to have to treat you and it's also true there are other social costs. these people are not on welfare. you can see people begging on the median. you find me in illegal mexican he's at the supermarket door trying to sell you a tamale or mow your lawn. now the other thing is these crime statistics in my experience are bogus when they say there's all of these evils who commit crimes a lot of the

crimes they're talking about if you on a package the number the crime as they are here illegally. i'm not saying they are saints, but that's not the major consequence. if you really are concerned about the migration you say they are driving down american wages. but if you have people that don't have the full human rights they will work for less. >> host: this is booktv live coverage from the "los angeles times" festival of books. charles bowden is the guest for this segment. here is the cover, "murder city" it is called. baltimore, you are on. >> caller: hello, mr. bowden. my name is michelle, and i just waed to tell you about ten years ago i was at a friend's house and she showed me a copy of your book and a completely changed the way i think about the border. it cost me to go to law school. i became a federal public spender working in mexico trying

to do the best i could to help these people [inaudible] getting caught up in the immigration law we and i just want to thank you for writing about what you write about and saying the things that you say because people need to hear it. >> guest: good. thank you. i'm glad you went to law school. in this case i will approve a lawyer. look, the book, our future was an effort i made the 13 wars photographers stay in a fortress of what these policies were creating. i felt the city was violent then. this book is the actual reports created a culture of jobs in the city. >> host: what is the picture on the front? >> guest: a dead guy with a bunch of cops and not him at night. that is a real picture taken by a friend of mine. he spent his whole life in

juarez. some days there are 15, 20 people. this isn't a disco. these people are the full spectrum to read january 31st, just an example 15 high school kids in a working class where the private party because the parents were free to let them celebrate soccer victory in a public place our guys came and killed all of them boys and girls just slaughtered then, the and big puddles. if you want to save these 15 kids who are going to high school go ahead, the president of mexico said that but i don't think that he knows what he's talking about. the mother showed up and announced to the president of mexico when he came into town a couple weeks later to say he was going to fix the city you said mr. president, you're not

welcome here. i don't want to hear. if your son were killed hubert turnover every rock in this country if you turn to them and stood there. it's like turning your back to god in mexico. she said out loud what everyone was thinking. they know better than to think is just bad people getting killed. >> host: the next call comes from el paso route on the border. >> caller: i was wondering what your overall opinion would be in the effect of -- line from el paso -- do you see them standing in to texas? that is my first question and the second question is the elite moving the reader into texas how do you feel that is going to affect the economy with of the

lower class and middle class >> guest: the immigration law we in arizona is a normal reaction to the migration. we call the xenophobia. the latin community into the united states most of which is legal they were playing in the grandstand. what they are is what they used to grow tomatoes and now we will move over to the migration of the mexican hedge 30 to 60,000 have fled juarez for all el paso. they bought negative houses and get pricing up. they are investing. i will see in the long run where it hurts the people in el paso. what it does is hurts the people in juarez. this is a drain of the elite and

they are educated and affluent. the people that stayed in juarez because they can't take the documents and they don't have the money to be allowed into the u.s. so they're left behind. >> host: you looked at war is in this book, "murder city," but what about your age of laredo and along the city? >> guest: it's along the border that is violent now. tijuana, it's all violent but the whole country is becoming increasingly violent. i mean, you know [inaudible] where the president comes from, i can go on and on. >> host: and it's all about drugs? >> guest: it's not all about drugs. it is a tipping point but they

would rip the lid off. a lot of it is just violence and poverty. the guy killed in juarez for example. a month or so ago because he was stealing a door of an abandoned house and in neighborhood somebody shot him so he couldn't steal the door. that isn't a drug crime. to tamales were executed at 9:30 in the morning a block from the u.s. consulate in juarez because they were supposed to meet a 10-dollar payment a week of extortion to have their cart there and they couldn't meet it. these guys come anything you could explain but the drugs. drugs are a business. murder is expensive. >> host: our guest is the charles bowden. his most recent book is "murder city." frequently what is your next book. i'm going to the mississippi delta. i'm going to write about soil and people and i'm going to

write about the richest land. why does the richest land on earth remain after two centuries the poorest region in the united states? i'm going to drink the water, have cold beer and eat a lot of catfish. >> host: thank you for being on booktv with us. >> guest: thank you for a much. >> charles bowden is the author of "down by the river," and "down by the city he quote he's a contributing editor for mother jones and ceq and writes for harbors magazine. to find out more, visit latimes.com/festivalofbooks. from the 2010 virginia festival of look in charlottesville virginia, rebecca sklott reveals her book, the immortal life of

henrietta lacks. >> she was a port tobacco farmer who was raised in southern virginia and eventually move to baltimore where she is diagnosed with cervical cancer at 30 and without her knowledge her doctor took a small piece of her tumor and put it into a petri dish and her cells became the first immortal human cell line in. no one knows why entirely why hers never buy it. her cells are alive growing in laboratories around the world though she died in 1951, and they became one of the most important things that happened in medicine and they were used to help with the plea of vaccine and went in the first space mission to see what would happen to the human cells in gravity, they were the first cloned. the scientific landmarks that can from the cells went on and on. >> host: and they are still used today? >> yes, they're still one of the most widely used cell lines.

>> what is a cell line? >> they live in a laboratory and lo grow indefinitely so they will keep growing and multiplying and lifting of said of the body as long as they are kept fed and clean and the right temperature and everything. so those can go on forever. >> why did the doctor ticker cells? >> this is a point scientists were trying to grow any cells they could get their hands on sedate and taking samples from anyone who came into the hospital. lots of different hospitals, the scientists had taken hundreds of samples from people and they all died, the samples all died. >> with their knowledge or without? >> pretty standard to do it without their knowledge so very few people knew this was happening. >> and this was in the 30's and 40's? back in the 50's. 1951 is the year the cells were taken. and yes, it was standard practice that time and some ways still is today. a lot of people have their tissue used in research now and don't really realize it.

>> and why from a tumor? >> welcome there was a specific study going on at hopkins looking at a cancer. the pap smear had been developed not long before this and so the doctors could take the cells from the cervix and look under a microscope to diagnose cancer. but they didn't really know what they were looking for some there was a widespread misdiagnoses and so they were taking cervical cancer cells specifically so they could establish what they were looking for with the pap smear. so that's why cervical cancer cells specifically, but more generally, they were just trying to grow any cancer cells they could because at this time they didn't know anything about cancer. they didn't know what dna was. they had no idea how the cancer cells begich differently than the normal cells and how they spread so fast and so part of it was a wanted to grow cells so they could figure out what cancer cells really was. >> what is the medicinal value then of cancer cells?

>> how did cancer cells help alito vaccine? it seems like a complete disconnect. so there are a lot of different ways, and one of them is that they do have a lot of things about them that are normal. the of abnormal, you know, dna, but, you know, they still metabolize and produce protein and energy and degette cell membranes that function like normal cells so you can study with a normal cancer cell and apply that to any but they also work as little factories so if you in fact the hilo cells with a virus like polio less cells grow and grow and the virus will reproduce and you can mass produce viruses and extract them from the cells said they were considered factories but more generally they are widely studied so there's a sort of baseline for any research. scientists know how the hilo cells begich and what to expect from them and in the dish so they expose them to a drug or

something else and the cells react and they know what they're starting from so they can see what changes. so there's a lot of different ways. >> host: or art are the theories for the reasons per cells survived? >> guest: there aren't any. we know that she had hpv that is the virus that causes cervical cancer and it goes into your dna and changes it. there's something about the hpv and how would interact with her cells but caused the cancer itself. she was 30-years-old and she had a nickel sized tumor when they founded -- >> [inaudible] >> it's not huge, but it went -- the more amazing thing is it went from the mackall sites within six months every organ in her body was taken over bye cancers would grow very fast or in her doctor had ever seen before so there was something special about her tumor and we know there is an enzyme in the cells that rebuild the chromosomes so they don't age

they just stay young and dana fer diavik y her cells do that and others didn't is still a mystery. >> tell us about her family. tell about her background first. he said she is a tobacco farmer. a little bit more information. >> she worked the same farm land that her ancestors had. a very impoverished family for generations and she'd lived up to baltimore in the 40's because the tobacco farms had dried up and her husband found work in baltimore said that is how she ended up in hopkins and she had five kids by the time she died at 30 and she was just a caretaker. she wanted more children. she was devoted to her kids and was a person if you were in baltimore and didn't have any money and you needed a place to stay used up on her floor and if you are hungry there was always a pot of food on the stove and

she would feed you. if you need a girlfriend, she would find you one. she was the sort of super mother to everyone. so for the family the fact that her cells are taking care of so many people and they felt so many people make sense in terms of her personality and what should have done. a family very much sees these cells as henrietta, they believe that her soul is alive and that she was brought back as an angel to take care of people. >> [inaudible] >> there are three kids still alive today and they have been taken in the 70's. scientists after the cells had grown to the tracie and other cells. to learn about the cells scientists decided to track down her kids and do research on them to understand. so her husband who had a third

grade education and he didn't know what a cell was a phone call one day and the way he understood it was it got your wife, she's the wife to be alive in a laboratory. we've been doing research on her the last 25 years and now we want to test your kids to see if they have cancer, none of which the scientists said, but he thought they had her in a cell. that was his only understanding of the word. so her family got sucked into this world of research they didn't understand and the scientist didn't realize the family didn't understand and it has increased dramatic effect on her family and they've been struggling with everyday since for a lot of different reasons. every very emotional. her daughter deborah very much believe her daughter is alive and she would ask the scientists questions like if you are sending yourself submit his case can she rest in peace and if you inject them in the chemicals does that somehow hurt her. and she found out fairly early

on that herself for the first commercialized said they were bought and sold in multibillion-dollar industry grew out of selling these cells and her family can't afford health insurance and they are quite poor and if our mother was so important to the medicine why can't we go to the doctor. so they've never gotten an answer to the question. >> has there ever been any litigation? >> not from the family. there have been other -- >> why? >> some of it is access to legal counsel. they didn't have that. but also, there's been other cases in the past where people have passed over ownership of their cells. amanda found out his doctor patented his cells without his knowledge and they were worth billions of dollars is very rare that happens. most cells are worth nothing. but the courts have always ruled against the people to come from so the way the case law stands is you don't have property rights in the tissue once they leave your body.

>> that is the question of the world. what about the johns hopkins doctor who took these plaques tell us about them. >> welcome there were all of them said there was a certain team of doctors. howard jones with sir initial dr. that this all the tumor and diagnosed it and there was a team at hopkins and the research on the cervical cancer and the scientists who grew the cells so they took the cells and gave them to the scientist and he gave them away for free. no one patented the cells. that wasn't something you did in the 50's, so he gave them to anyone who he's always use them for science. they very quickly went all over the world. at one point and factory was set up where they were mass-produced to about 3 trillion cells zero weeks of the volume of the cells is just kind of incomprehensible. >> when you produce this besides polio where else have they gone?

>> everywhere. >> another example? and products? >> tataris -- you know, you can use them as a baseline. you can grow various things and if you want to grow a certain protein you can use the cells for that. and they -- research donner to go to the scientific data bases and you type in hela it's like going on google and typing and. the research on her cells -- it still goes today. >> what is hela? >> the name of the cells. >> henrietta -- >> it stands for henrietta lacks, right. i can't remember the number but it's like a number of scientific journal goals published each month using the hela cells is about, i can't remember exactly the around 3,000 papers a month. an enormous amount of research.

>> how did you find this story? >> i first learned about the cells when i was 16 in a basic biology class. most people do. and -- >> after the 70's it became more public knowledge? >> well, no, most people don't know her name or anything about her that there are these cells so the scientists or biology teachers will talk about cancer and cells and say we learned a lot of what we know about cancer and cells from this one line that have been grown since 1951 and there is a final they've been alive longer than the person they can from. >> [inaudible] >> part of it was my teacher knew her name for some reason. he wrote in big letters on the board and he said the cells came from a woman named henrietta lacks and she was black and that was it and he erased the board and class was over. i went up to him afterwards and said what else we know about her? who was she? he said that's it. we don't know anything else. and it just stock. and as i got older and started

to do some writing it just -- so yes, i've been living with this. some argue the first person to pursue this as a book? >> there was one book that came out in the late 80's called conspiracy of cells and was about a specific moment in the cells histories of there was -- the cells had ability to contaminate other cultures, so they grow so powerfully. and the cells can float on dust particles and travon on washed hands so if you touch a dish of cells and something else you can transfer cells petraeus without knowing it the hela cells grow out of control and contaminated a lot of things. so this one guy wrote a story just about out, the contamination issue and the source of controversy that it caused. but no one ever wrote about her family in the sort of larger scope of the cells. there's a history and science and the way that the affected madison and the broad look at.

stomachs one day one when you say to yourself i'm going to write a book about henrietta lacks what did you do? >> well, it didn't happen quite like that. i was a graduate student in a program so i got my undergraduate degree in biology and then decide -- >> you do have a science background then. >> and i decided to study writing. so i went to this program and part of what you do in these programs is you have to write a thesis. a publishable book link manuscript and produce it by the end of the year for school. and so literally the program started and we started the first class and they said okay, you now have to come up with a book idea which is inconceivable to students. itt program and that tweaks everybody out. you can't do a group to the kaput in three years. coming up with an idea, researching, writing it is an impossible task. but i, like many students said we will write a collection of essays because that's easier to conceive of an entire book.

and i knew it had a 150 pages so i thought i was going to write a collection of essays about forgotten women in science and i did a little proposal and would get out of the page forgotten women in science and i numbered one through 12 because i knew the page count if it was like ten pages per woman and i put henrietta lacks on the first line and then i was like i wonder what the every 11 people will be and so i was like well i will just start try eink the henrietta thing and see where it goes and here i get 11 years later just published the book. so, there was a moment when -- >> so you started your mfa and didn't publish -- >> i did my coursework and left without finishing my visas and everyone said you are crazy, don't do that. i said no, i'm going to do the book the way i feel like i have to and then come back and hand them a book and then get my degree. so technically i got my degree and all that long ago but i finished my thesis and 99, 2000, and i think my book was and

2007, 2008. but, yes i did eventually go back and do it. >> when did you meet her family? how did you find them? >> i met them in -- i guess it was actually january 1st 2000 when i actually met her son. >> was the exciting? >> absolutely, exciting, terrifying. i had been trying for a very long time to get them to talk to me and they were resistant. it took me about a year and a half -- >> with a suspicious? >> i was one and a long line of people who had come to them wanting something, particularly white people come and they just don't trust anybody. these had so many bad experiences. her medical records were released to a journalist and published at one point in that book the conspiracy. at one point someone came to them and said here is a lawyer and he was going to sue on their behalf and ended up trying to steal their mothers' medical records. there's so many things that

happened they just didn't know who to trust and didn't believe anyone. so they were understandably wary of me and so it took a long time to get them to talk to me and open up. >> what did you learn from them? >> a lot. i think i will be figuring not what i learned from them for years. i was in my late 20s at that point and i didn't really know what i was doing, and i learned -- >> probably safer that way. >> yeah, and a lot of people say why did you keep going? all of these roadblocks and i just wanted to do the thing in the there's this side of it i was young and inexperienced and i'm just going to do this thing. i didn't understand how paul told the task was when i set out to do it and so i think i

learned so much but i think one of the things i learned very early on was the importance of thinking of the impact journalist has on people they write about because a lot of their mistrust towards me was the way in which they had sort of had bad experiences in the past and writers have come and gone and had different effects on them and so i spent a lot of time thinking about that and thinking about what my duty was as a writer and one of the first things i really thought a lot about plus this idea of seeking another person who came along and was going to promising ways they might not and i wanted from the beginning i thought it was important for them that this could be something the would benefit them if it was also going to benefit me. so i said from the beginning i was going to set up a foundation and i did. i set up this henrietta lacks foundation and among other things the scholarship fund.

the descendants of henry -- henrietta. proceeds will hopefully be able to get money for school and for children to help them with health care. so that all came out of this kind of seeing how traumatized they were and understanding i was coming to them as another person through part of that story and wanting to approach it in a way that wasn't going to be damaging for them. >> did johns hopkins willingly work with you on this book? >> they never tried to hide anything. i have access to all the archives there and so this story has been held there in a small versions for a long time. littleness particles, magazine stories have been published with just a nugget of the story. cells taken without permission important in science. so in some ways they were relieved i was doing the book so

like we can stop answering these questions over and over again from journalists seemed to take these cells without permission? but it is the understanding of the scope of the whole story the way that the children were used in the research. i think a lot of people were learning and have been learning from the book about the range of things that actually happened. >> rebecca did you talk ancestors or the doctor himself who took the cells? is he still alive? >> amazingly her initial doctor, he's 99 now. >> what is his name? >> how word jones coming and he's an incredibly important scientist physician. he was behind the first test-tube baby in the united states, he and his wife were pioneers in in vitro fertilization and infertility research. he was still alive and he remembered her very vividly because it was unlike anything

he had ever seen. so i talked to him and also spend a lot of time with henrietta's siblings and cousins and her husband was still alive so a lot of extended family. >> was their anything nefarious about the taking of the cells in 1951? >> there wasn't. this was something that was upset with standard practice. there was no ill intention. there was nothing done to her. they took the sample without asking. they could've never imagined what that could have led to. they didn't know what dna was, so they couldn't know that someday someone would be to look in the cells and learn about her kids and grandkids and great grand kids. they also had no concept that they were worth any money. none of that what began be a remote possibility of that .7 this was just about trying to cure cancer and there was no ellen tension at all.

>> they started selling the cells though. was there any from johns hopkins out financial support for the family? >> no, and johns hopkins never sold them. they give them away for free and they are sort of a public domain. you could sell them if he wanted to and there was no -- there is no patent. they are out there and any scientist can grow them. >> johns hopkins patented them? >> welcome gap, they would have profited in that case but in the 50's you couldn't, they couldn't have patented them. people didn't start patenting until much later. so that is one of the tough questions about the money issue is people often ask has the family been given any money and the answer is no so a lot of reasons one of which is like it's impossible to trace who made the money, how much money was made, how much -- you can go on line and some of the bigger companies started off selling

via hela cells but they obviously didn't get where they were just by selling the hela cells. you can buy a vial of hela cells for two eckert $50 then using them about $10,000 of idle but how much of that is hela and how much is the science that went into it and all this other stuff -- >> what is hela? you say that you can buy a vital from who? >> biological supply companies. sparks a lot of companies? >> yes, and there are non-profit that buys them and the money that goes back into keeping the cells alive and growing and there are for-profit companies that is, anyone can sell them. and, you know, so that's the big question related to that and in terms of the money going to the family, right now most people in america have some issues a lot of them being used in research some of them commercial, turned into commercial products in some

ways to resolve the question of giving money to the lacks family is a big one because if you give money to them what about the billions of other people whose cells are being used in research and where is the money come from, how -- it's just part of a larger discussion that is happening about who should be profiting off of parts of the human body and who should have control. in a lot of ways it is becoming part of the health care debate because so much of the future of medicine and the drugs and vaccines and everything else starts with research on the cells taken from people often without them really realizing it and then commercialized. the people give them -- they are taken for free and turned into products and sold back to people and a lot of people can't afford them and so there is this -- it is becoming who should have access. >> how do the hela cells differ from stem cells? >> welcome hela cells our cancer cells and blood stem cells are

not. hela cells are already cervical cancer cells so they're very specific kind of cell. but you can now selling in swa is you can alter hela cells and turn them into other cells which is amazing. scientists have the ability to take a hela cell and make it behave like a heart cell. so in some ways they have -- they sound like some cells but they are different. they can't sort of become something else. and also they are just not normal cells to read the have extremely abnormal dna so a lot about them. >> where do her kids live? >> they live in baltimore unemployed. one is employed. he was laid off a while ago.

he does short end and occasionally -- trucking up and down the east coast. they are in their sixties and seventies. did your book bring them a lot of media attention or did they avoid the limelight? >> yes it is picking and choosing what they do. cbs sunday morning to the big thing on the recently which was great for them. they really loved the chance to just go out there and speak for themselves and have people hear them and one of the things that has been happening with the story is, you know, there was quite a while they were like to have write your never going to finish this book. and then when i did finish it there was this sense among her kids that nobody was going to read it and nobody was going to care because that has been their

experience for most of their lives, and so for them but coverage and they can to a lot of my book events and the response has been amazing for them. it's been validating. and it's not -- for her children the story has been about we want to get recognition for our mother and what happened to her and a lot of ways i think they haven't really felt that much about the story in terms of what the experience and in a lot of ways the book is about them and the fact they went through something much more traumatized that what happened to their mother and the thing that has happened is they are now able to own their story a bit more because people are coming to them and saying i'm sorry for what he went through. thank you for your mother's contribution and that has meant the world to them. >> today with a dr. mckeithen think about taking cells without

telling the patient or getting permission? >> it depends on how the cells are taken. what happens to the family in the 70's if they are going -- if a person is used for research couldn't happen today there's a federal law that says if you go to a person just to take tissue for research you have to ask and you have to tell them what they are doing that if the tissues taken for another reason, you have a biopsy and sign a form that cell line your name is stripped off and they're put into a bank and so if a researcher wants to do research on that they don't have to come back and get permission because it isn't research on human being. its research on a part that is detached from their name and identity. >> is that controversy? >> yes particularly since the argument has been that they are anonymous samples they could never be tracked back to the person and but of course now we do have the ability