Archive for the 'Book Reviews' Category

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
Find it at the library: RC265.6.L24 S55 2010

Imagine your cells as the key factor in the development of the polio vaccine, treatments for AIDS, and many other medical discoveries, but your family had no idea and neither did you. That was what happened with Henrietta Lacks.

Scientists know her as HeLa. Her cells and the cells of many other cancer patients were collected without their knowledge in the “colored” ward of John Hopkins in the 1950s. All of those collected cells died, except for Henrietta’s; her’s grew, multiplied, and continue to multiply today – 60 years after her death. At first the cells were sent from one scientist to another in small vials, but soon, they were produced and shipped in mass to scientists around the world for experiments. Her family had no idea. It was not until years later when the identify of HeLa cells were revealed as belonging to a poor black woman who lived in the south named Henrietta Lacks, that her family knew about their existence. Journalists, filmmakers, book writers, and everybody wanted to know who she was and what made her cells “immortal”.

Rebecca Skloot, like the others, wanted to know more about the woman behind the cells, “what kind of life she led, what happened to her children, and what she’d think about cells from her cervix living on forever” (p. 2). We follow Skloot in her book to discover the answer to these questions and more. Her book describes to us with details of how she went from wondering about this person in college, to reading about and contacting people who knew the family in Lacks Town (Virgina), and hoe she finally uncovered the story from people who longer trusted anyone asking about HeLa. Although her story is mostly chronological, Skloot switches back and forth between her story to find the answers and Henrietta’s life and story. She describes every detail, making the story even more fascinating: the method and intervals of Radium used to try to treat Henrietta’s cancer, George Gey’s impeccably clean lab and inventions, and physical and personal descriptions of family members. All of these details were interwoven with historical and contextual information, and tidbits about the key characters: their personalities, interests, and quirks.

The story of Henrietta and her cells have been a key factor in our society learning more about illnesses and diseases, and they will be as long as her cells continue to reproduce and multiply. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot is scientific, historical, genealogical, sociological, anthropological … and just darn good! It is an interesting, unforgettable, and a must-read for everyone.

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