The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

By Rebecca Skloot

Biologists around the world use a specific cell line named HeLa. HeLa was the first mammalian cell to be adequately grown in the lab. This cell line originated from a single person - in fact, from the cancerous tissue inside the cervix of a black woman named Henrietta Lacks, taken without her consent in the 1950s, mere months before her death. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks details the story of Henrietta, of her family, of her immortal cells; it brings to light the mental oppression that HeLa caused on the Lacks family while simultaneously immeasurably progressing the field of cell culture and the understanding of biology. Through the investigative work of Rebecca Skloot, we get an article-novel hybrid that follows the history of Henrietta and the cells and in parallel the story of the research Skloot conducted alongside some of the Lacks family. The book is heartfelt, informative, shocking, and sometimes maddening. The Lacks family has had a lot of trouble coming to terms with their mothers' cells being still alive 50 years later and proliferating through labs around the world; this is in addition to the qualms they have about not getting any financial compensation for it. I agree with them on both of these fronts - the fact that one woman's cells are so imperative to science but her descendants can't afford to go to the doctor is just ridiculous! This is a must read if you are in the biological sciences, especially if you work with HeLa cells or any mammalian cell for that matter (the techniques learned from HeLa really started the field). I would still recommend the book even if HeLa isn't directly relevant to you, because it is a crazy, decisive event in human history told in a nicely written book. (11/03/2021)