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From a single, abbreviated life grew a seemingly immortal line of cells that made some of the most crucial innovations in modern science possible. And from that same life, and those cells, Rebecca Skloot has fashioned in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks a fascinating and moving story of medicine and family, of how life is sustained in laboratories and in memory. Henrietta Lacks was a mother of five in Baltimore, a poor African American migrant from the tobacco farms of Virginia, who died from a cruelly aggressive cancer at the age of 30 in 1951. A sample of her cancerous tissue, taken without her knowledge or consent, as was the custom then, turned out to provide one of the holy grails of mid-century biology: human cells that could survive--even thrive--in the lab. Known as HeLa cells, their stunning potency gave scientists a building block for countless breakthroughs, beginning with the cure for polio. Meanwhile, Henrietta's family continued to live in poverty and frequently poor health, and their discovery decades later of her unknowing contribution--and her cells' strange survival--left them full of pride, anger, and suspicion. For a decade, Skloot doggedly but compassionately gathered the threads of these stories, slowly gaining the trust of the family while helping them learn the truth about Henrietta, and with their aid she tells a rich and haunting story that asks the questions, Who owns our bodies? And who carries our memories?
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
Overview
Starred Review. Science journalist Skloot makes a remarkable debut with this multilayered story about faith, science, journalism, and grace. It is also a tale of medical wonders and medical arrogance, racism, poverty and the bond that grows, sometimes painfully, between two very different women—Skloot and Deborah Lacks—sharing an obsession to learn about Deborah's mother, Henrietta, and her magical, immortal cells. Henrietta Lacks was a 31-year-old black mother of five in Baltimore when she died of cervical cancer in 1951. Without her knowledge, doctors treating her at Johns Hopkins took tissue samples from her cervix for research. They spawned the first viable, indeed miraculously productive, cell line—known as HeLa. These cells have aided in medical discoveries from the polio vaccine to AIDS treatments. What Skloot so poignantly portrays is the devastating impact Henrietta's death and the eventual importance of her cells had on her husband and children. Skloot's portraits of Deborah, her father and brothers are so vibrant and immediate they recall Adrian Nicole LeBlanc's Random Family. Writing in plain, clear prose, Skloot avoids melodrama and makes no judgments. Letting people and events speak for themselves, Skloot tells a rich, resonant tale of modern science, the wonders it can perform and how easily it can exploit society's most vulnerable people
Customer Review
I highly recommend this book to anyone. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a powerful story about a family's experiencing the loss of their mother and finding out twenty years later that cells from the mother have been used for many different kinds of research. This leads to profit for many companies and sent around the world and in outer space. All this while the family lives in poverty, unable to afford healthcare.
This book should be mandatory reading for scientists, physicians, or anyone involved in healthcare or research. This story brings a face and humanity to healthcare and research that is done on people. Henrietta Lacks' family was treated poorly because of being black and poor. Henrietta did not understand the surgery and radiation treatments she was given, and she didn't understand that anyone would use her cells for research and profit. Through the telling of Henrietta and her family's story, the author sheds light on the issues of what does patient consent really mean and what are patient's rights. If something is surgically removed from a patient, who does it belong to? What rights does the patient or the patient's family have? These are important questions for anyone to think about, but are particularly salient for scientific researchers and people who work in healthcare.
All in all, this was an enjoyable story with important implications. I highly recommend it!
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
