The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Although Henrietta Lacks was her real name, scientists refer to her as HeLa. Despite being a poor Southern tobacco farmer who farmed the same area as her enslaved ancestors, her cells were secretly removed and went on to become one of the most significant medical instruments. She has been deceased for more than sixty years, yet the first "immortal" human cells generated in culture are still living today. All of the HeLa cells that have ever been produced would weigh more than 50 million metric tons, or 100 Empire State Buildings, if they were piled onto a scale. In addition to being used in the billions to buy and sell, HeLa cells have been crucial in the development of the polio vaccine, have revealed secrets about cancer, viruses, and the impacts of the atomic bomb, and have contributed to significant advancements like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping.

Nevertheless, Henrietta Lacks is buried in an unmarked grave and is almost forgotten.

Currently, Rebecca Skloot takes us on an incredible journey that begins in the 1950s in the "colored" ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital and ends in East Baltimore today, where her children and grandchildren live and struggle with the legacy of her cells. The journey begins in Henrietta's small, dying hometown of Clover, Virginia, a place of wooden quarters for enslaved people, faith healings, and voodoo.

It took more than twenty years after Henrietta's death for her family to find out about her "immortality," as researchers studying HeLa started utilizing her husband and kids in experiments without getting their permission. Her family never received any of the earnings, despite the fact that the cells had sparked a multimillion dollar business that sells human biological resources. The past and present of the Lacks family are intricately linked to the history of African American experimentation, the emergence of bioethics, and the legal struggles surrounding our ability to regulate the substances that make us who we are, as Rebecca Skloot so masterfully demonstrates.

Rebecca got deeply involved in the life of the Lacks family throughout the ten years it took to piece together this tale, particularly Deborah, Henrietta's daughter, who was heartbroken to discover her mother's cells. Her mind was racing with inquiries: Had her mother been cloned by scientists? Did it damage her when scientists used viruses to infect her cells and launch them into space? What became to Elsie, her sister, who passed away at the age of fifteen at a mental health facility? And why couldn't her kids afford health insurance if their mother was so significant to the medical field?

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is an incredibly captivating book that portrays the beauty and drama of scientific discovery together with its effects on people. It is intimate in emotion, astounding in scale, and hard to put down.