The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

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? 
          
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.

This has been one of the most interesting and shocking books I have read in quite a while - I had to keep reminding myself while I was reading it that it is based on true events, it is so far removed from anything I have ever experienced myself (although Australia obviously also has it's own dark history with it's native aboriginals).

Although Skloot is a scientific writer, this book didn't read like a text book, and even though I hadn't had anything to do with biology since year 10 high school, I found it easy to follow and her writing informative and really engaging. The language Skloot used seemed to keep in character for those that she was interviewing, and it made it easy to image the conversations actually taking place, brining the story alive for me. It made me want to read faster to hear how it all ended, but at the same time I didn't want it to end and had to pace myself.

I disagree with other reviewers when they say Skloot makes the story about her - it doesn't mention really anything about her personal life (apart from when she was studying and her lecturer first introduced her to the name Henrietta Lacks) - but it does cover her journey on piecing together this story with the Lacks family.

One of the things I enjoyed most about this book was that there was clearly so much research done in to the story - and I learnt a lot from reading it (eg how the Klu Klux Klan originated, testing that was conducted on the black community, and at the 'negro insane hospital'. In between sections explaining the scientific timelines, the lacks family story was woven through, from when Henrietta first went in to hospital, to when Deborah passed away and the book was concluded. 

One of the most heartbreaking things about this story is that even though Henrietta's cells have helped with so many medical advances in fighting diseases, creating lifesaving vaccines, and understanding the human body in general - her family couldn't even afford the medical treatment or appointments they needed to stay healthy and comfortable. 

Now that I have finished reading the book, I can't help but think 'what would the world me like if the doctors never took her cells?' Would we be in a different state with regards to medicines available? OR would researchers have still gotten there in the end?

I enjoyed reading this book so much that since I started reading it (and especially now I haven finished it) that I have talked about it to friends, family and coworkers and encouraged them all to check it out.