Monday, August 12, 2013
In 2010, when I first read
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, I knew the book was important. Who knew that the cervical cells of a seemingly insignificant black woman who died of cancer would live forever in cancer research? Stricken with a cancerous tumor, Lacks cervical cells were harvested without her knowledge or consent and that is the subject of the book. Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor, black, tobacco farmer whose cells?taken without her knowledge in 1951?became one of the most important tools in medicine, vital for developing the polio vaccine, cloning, gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, and more. Henrietta?s cells have been bought and sold by the billions, yet she remains virtually unknown, and even today, her own family can?t afford health insurance!
Soon to be made into an HBO movie by Oprah Winfrey and Alan Ball, this
New York Times bestseller takes readers on an extraordinary journey, from the ?colored? ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s to stark white laboratories with freezers filled with HeLa cells, from Henrietta?s small, dying hometown of Clover, Virginia, to East Baltimore today, where her children and grandchildren live and struggle with the legacy of her cells.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks tells a riveting story of the collision between ethics, race, and medicine; of scientific discovery and faith healing; and of a daughter consumed with questions about the mother she never knew. It?s a story inextricably linked to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over our own genetic material. Quite a read!
http://rebeccaskloot.com/the-immortal-life/