The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
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- ISBN13: 9780307712509
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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 lacking her knowledge—became one of the most vital 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 vital 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 tiny, 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 tree did not learn of her “immortality” until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists investigating HeLa started using her spouse and children in research lacking informed consent. And though the cells had launched a multimillion-dollar industry that sells human biological materials, her family tree never saw any of the profits. As Rebecca Skloot so brilliantly shows, the tale of the Lacks family tree—past and present—is inextricably connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the officially authorized battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of.
Over the decade it took to uncover this tale, Rebecca became enmeshed in the lives of the Lacks family tree—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 vital to medicine, why couldn’t her children afford health insurance?
Intimate in feeling, astonishing in scope, and impossible to place down, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks captures the beauty and drama of scientific discovery, as well as its human consequences.
From the Hardcover edition.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 persons cells, Rebecca Skloot has fashioned in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks a fascinating and moving tale of medicine and family tree, 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 lacking 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 tree nonstop to live in poverty and frequently poor health, and their discovery decades later of her unknowing contribution–and her cells’ weird survival–left them full of pride, rage, and suspicion. For a decade, Skloot doggedly but compassionately gathered the threads of these tales, slowly gaining the trust of the family tree while helping them learn the truth about Henrietta, and with their aid she tells a rich and haunting tale that questions 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 huge thoughts in science and beyond, and an inventive method of storytelling. Abumrad has won copious awards, including a National Headliner Award in Radio and an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Science Television 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 tale that’s at once mythically large and painfully intimate.
Just the simple facts are hard to judge: that in 1951, a poor black woman named Henrietta Lacks dies of cervical cancer, but pieces of the tumor that killed her–taken lacking 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 learn how viruses work and how cancer develops (among a million additional things). All of which is to say: the science end of this tale 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 tale, the part that could have easily remained hidden had she not spent ten years finding it: Who was Henrietta Lacks? How did she live? How she did die? Did her family tree 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 tree 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 tree can’t afford the health insurance to care for diseases their mother’s cells have helped to cure.
Rebecca Skloot tells the tale with fantastic sensitivity, urgency and, in the end, damn fine writing. I highly recommend this book. –Jad Abumrad
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The sample was deeply engaging but I don’t want to buy a crippled e-book. If text-to-speech hadn’t been blocked, I would have bought it.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
You know you are dealing with evil money hungry Drs. when the Nazis twin experiments sound in line with the theft of this uncomplaining’s cells. I disagree with the additional reviewers as Lacks was no victim but a fierce mother and courageous uncomplaining who not only had to find and diagnose her own tumor but bear medical atrocities and neglect at the hands of yes, American doctors. Skloot is a stellar writer as in the telling of the howling storm on the day of her funeral just 60 years ago foretells the insane cloning, Obama advocating stem cell nonsense and additional joke science that has NO proof per Michael J. Fox that they can cure diddly squat but let’s steer billions and snub ethics to advance sham monster mash science. Revolting way to steal from her family tree when they never got a dime. Bring shame on on us all.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
I don’t know why this book has such fantastic reviews. I establish it tedious and could barely end it at the end. The cell history and research was appealing but not compelling. The characters were appealing but again, not compelling.
I don’t know the fantastic reviews on this book, not my cup of tea.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
In the very first chapter of this work, Henrietta Flacks and family tree members are quoted directly in settings and intimate conversations, but no sources are agreed. Lacking these substantiations it is fiction and cast doubt upon the credulity of the rest of work. And I so much looked forwards to this material.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
The premise for this book was so appealing as was about 1/3 of the book. I establish it got tedious and felt that the book could have been written in half the words. It got pretty dull to me.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5