The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks |
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| Title: | The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks |
| Author: | Rebecca Skloot |
| Publisher: | Crown |
| Type: | Book / Hardcover |
| Publication Date: | 02 February, 2010 |
| ISBN / ISBN-13: | 1400052173 / 9781400052172 |
| List Price: | $26.00 |
| You Save: | $10.79 |
| Amazon Price: | $15.21 |
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This book is also available, brand-new, from 3rd-party marketplace sellers at Amazon.com, from $12.75.
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Editorial Review / Publisher's Information:
Product Description
Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. If you could pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, they’d weigh more than 50 million metric tons—as much as a hundred Empire State Buildings. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb’s effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions.
Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave.
Now Rebecca Skloot takes us on an extraordinary journey, from the “colored” ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s to stark white laboratories with freezers full of HeLa cells; from Henrietta’s small, dying hometown of Clover, Virginia—a land of wooden slave quarters, faith healings, and voodoo—to East Baltimore today, where her children and grandchildren live and struggle with the legacy of her cells.
Henrietta’s family did not learn of her “immortality” until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists investigating HeLa began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. And though the cells had launched a multimillion-dollar industry that sells human biological materials, her family never saw any of the profits. As Rebecca Skloot so brilliantly shows, the story of the Lacks family—past and present—is inextricably connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of.
Over the decade it took to uncover this story, Rebecca became enmeshed in the lives of the Lacks family—especially Henrietta’s daughter Deborah, who was devastated to learn about her mother’s cells. She was consumed with questions: Had scientists cloned her mother? Did it hurt her when researchers infected her cells with viruses and shot them into space? What happened to her sister, Elsie, who died in a mental institution at the age of fifteen? And if her mother was so important to medicine, why couldn’t her children afford health insurance?Â
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Intimate in feeling, astonishing in scope, and impossible to put down, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks captures the beauty and drama of scientific discovery, as well as its human consequences.
Amazon.com Review
Amazon Best Books of the Month, February 2010: 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? --Tom Nissley
Amazon Exclusive: Jad Abumrad Reviews The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Jad Abumrad is host and creator of the public radio hit Radiolab, now in its seventh season and reaching over a million people monthly. Radiolab combines cutting-edge production with a philosophical approach to big ideas in science and beyond, and an inventive method of storytelling. Abumrad has won numerous awards, including a National Headliner Award in Radio and an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Science Journalism Award. Read his exclusive Amazon guest review of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks:
Honestly, I can't imagine a better tale. A detective story that's at once mythically large and painfully intimate. Just the simple facts are hard to believe: that in 1951, a poor black woman named Henrietta Lacks dies of cervical cancer, but pieces of the tumor that killed her--taken without her knowledge or consent--live on, first in one lab, then in hundreds, then thousands, then in giant factories churning out polio vaccines, then aboard rocket ships launched into space. The cells from this one tumor would spawn a multi-billion dollar industry and become a foundation of modern science--leading to breakthroughs in gene mapping, cloning and fertility and helping to discover how viruses work and how cancer develops (among a million other things). All of which is to say: the science end of this story is enough to blow one's mind right out of one's face. But what's truly remarkable about Rebecca Skloot's book is that we also get the rest of the story, the part that could have easily remained hidden had she not spent ten years unearthing it: Who was Henrietta Lacks? How did she live? How she did die? Did her family know that she'd become, in some sense, immortal, and how did that affect them? These are crucial questions, because science should never forget the people who gave it life. And so, what unfolds is not only a reporting tour de force but also a very entertaining account of Henrietta, her ancestors, her cells and the scientists who grew them. The book ultimately channels its journey of discovery though Henrietta's youngest daughter, Deborah, who never knew her mother, and who dreamt of one day being a scientist. As Deborah Lacks and Skloot search for answers, we're bounced effortlessly from the tiny tobacco-farming Virginia hamlet of Henrietta's childhood to modern-day Baltimore, where Henrietta's family remains. Along the way, a series of unforgettable juxtapositions: cell culturing bumps into faith healings, cutting edge medicine collides with the dark truth that Henrietta's family can't afford the health insurance to care for diseases their mother's cells have helped to cure. Rebecca Skloot tells the story with great sensitivity, urgency and, in the end, damn fine writing. I highly recommend this book. --Jad Abumrad
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Customer Reviews:
• Hela Is Good Reading
26 July, 2010
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a fascinating story. I bought the CD box set and listen to it as I go about driving Some of the details about the cellular research are kind of heavy. However the author weaves in enough of the story of the Lacks family to more than compensate for those of us who have very little background in the scientific aspects of the book. I am glad that I am listening to it instead of reading it because I believe that I would have put the book down due to the scientific details. I think the telling of this story reveals why it is so important to understand the concept of informed consent and bioethics. I highly recommend the book because it does provide clear evidence of the abuses that are possible when one does not understand a process or procedure.
- Amazon Customer Review
• Disappointing Book
27 July, 2010
High on the list of science books, Amazon listed "The Immortal Life.." I had just finished reading a science book, "The Anatomy of an Epidemic," by Robert Whitaker, and I found it a "knock-your-socks-off" educational experience--and interesting! I wanted to read another science book, so I downloaded this book by Rebecca Skloot to my Kindle. I thought I might learn about cell culture, how cell cultures can be used to discover new treatments for cancer, etc. What I found instead were a few scattered pages about cell culture, especially of Henrietta Lacks's cancer cells, and countless pages that droned on and on with details about how Henrietta Lacks and her family were poorly treated in the 1950's. Someone interested in the bad treatment of blacks in the 1950's might like this book, but I much preferred Whitaker's book on mental disorders and psychotropic meds for interesting scientific information.
- Amazon Customer Review
• Revenge And Exoneration In Science. Huh!?.
28 July, 2010
I was engrossed by this book.
My admiration and gratitude goes out to Professor Rebecca Skloot and to the Lacks family! Congratulations!
Having worked in the field of tissue culture, human genetics, cancer research and dealing with the problems of cell line contamination, especially by HeLa Cells, I found this book helpful in telling the personal and family story of the Lacks family that we, I, often wondered about.
Very Moving. In fact the story would make a great Movie!
The book also gave a lot of history about the early days of tissue culture and emphasized the importance of the break-through in tissue culture media development and the use of HeLa cells in the battle against polio. I found this interesting.
Personally, I was frustrated in getting my Ph.D. partly because of the HeLa cell contamination described in the book. My Ph.D professor would not let me bring into the lab another very aggressively growing cell line for my research because he thought it might contaminate other cell lines in the lab, like HeLa had.
A delay of a year and a half took a significant bite out of my 3 year scholarship.
Anyway, several years later, I had the chance for "revenge" and "exoneration" when I was able to confirm all the 14 or more HeLa cell suspect cell lines were indeed all the same genetically, using multiple polymorphic enzyme markers I learned to type in my Ph.D. professor's lab.
I also exonerated many other cancer cell lines as being bona fide and above suspicion of being contaminant cell lines because of their differences in the polymorphic enzymes they had - they had a genetic finger-print.
They could be used with confidence in cancer and biological research.
My work also found another contamination group of cell lines, all originating from one laboratory, that was subsequently published - alerting the research community.
- Amazon Customer Review
• A Tale Of Modern Ethics
28 July, 2010
A sad and morally complicated story about the commercialization of the HeLa cells and the affect it has had on the "donors'" family. These cells harvested, under questionable means, by a John Hopkins doctor in the 1950's were used in many scientific experiments but for all the good they have done, the "donor" family is deeply scared from the exploitation.
The author becomes involved with the skeptical Lacks family and does her best to inform them of what actually happened to their mother's tissue. In particular the author finally gains the trust of the daughter and teaches her on the history of her mother. There is hope that this enlightenment will help the family heal this decades old wound.
- Amazon Customer Review
• So Excited About This Book--science, Mystery And Human Interest
29 July, 2010
Who would have thunk a science based book could be so exciting, I can hardly take the time to put it down to write this. Wrapping mystery with human interest, and a huge amount of science--Skloot has a winner in this book. If the library doesn't have a copy available--buy one. You don't want to wait to read this.
- Amazon Customer Review
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