Henrietta Lacks biographer Rebecca Skloot responds to US parent over 'porn' allegation; Guardian, 9/9/15

Alison Flood, Guardian; Henrietta Lacks biographer Rebecca Skloot responds to US parent over 'porn' allegation:

"Skloot, writing on Facebook, said that “Just in time for Banned Books Week,” a US-wide celebration of the right to read which takes place at the end of the month, “a parent in Tennessee has confused gynaecology with pornography and is trying to get my book banned from the Knoxville high school system”.

Skloot pointed to the “many other local parents” who disagree with Sims, and to the “other schools throughout the US” who support her biography, saying: “I choose to focus on those stories, and I hope the students of Knoxville will be able to continue to learn about Henrietta and the important lessons her story can teach them. Because my book is many things: It’s a story of race and medicine, bioethics, science illiteracy, the importance of education and equality and science and so much more. But it is not anything resembling pornography.”...

Skloot was later contacted on Facebook by Jimm Allen, assistant principal of the school attended by Sim’s son, who told her: “Know that the book and teachers have the complete support from the administration of the school. It’s an amazing book that fits with our Stem curriculum better than almost any book could. The next book that the sophomores are reading? Fahrenheit 451... Oh, sweet, sweet, irony.”

Ray Bradbury’s dystopian novel about a world in which books are burned has been the subject of repeated attempts to ban it since it was published in 1953."

Tennessee Mom Calls Book On Cervical Cancer Cells 'Pornographic'; HuffingtonPost.com, 9/8/15

Dhyana Taylor, HuffingtonPost.com; Tennessee Mom Calls Book On Cervical Cancer Cells 'Pornographic' :

"A mother from Knoxville, Tennessee, believes the New York Times bestseller The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks has too much graphic information for her 15-year-old son and should not have been assigned as summer reading.

"I consider the book pornographic," Jackie Sims told WBIR-Knoxville. "There's so many ways to say things without being graphic in nature, and that's the problem I have with the book."

The book, by science writer Rebecca Skloot, details the true story of a poor black tobacco farmer whose cervical cancer cells were taken without her knowledge in 1951. The cells, which scientists referred to as HeLa, went on to become a vital tool in medicine, helping to develop the polio vaccine, in vitro fertilization and other major scientific breakthroughs. The book was published in 2011 and has won numerous awards from medical and scientific organizations...

The anti-censorship group Kids' Right to Read Project said that book banning has been on the rise since 2012, and cited 49 book-banning incidents in 2013 -- a 53 percent rise over 2012. The American Library Association says that 311 challenges were filed in 2014 against a variety of books."