'The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks' by Rebecca Skloot delves into the story of Henrietta Lacks, a poor black woman whose cells were taken without her knowledge and became the basis for groundbreaking medical research. The narrative alternates between the scientific advancements made using her cells and the struggles faced by her family who were unaware of her contribution to science. Skloot's writing style combines history, science, and ethics seamlessly, providing a comprehensive account of Henrietta Lacks' life and the impact of her cells on modern medicine.
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Sensitive Topics/Content Warnings
Content warnings include discussions of cancer, medical experimentation, racism, and family trauma, which could be upsetting to some readers.
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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, which are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. 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.
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. Deborah was consumed with questions: Had scientists cloned her mother? Had they killed her to harvest her cells? 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.
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2 comment(s)
I read this earlier this year but after I found the book in second hand store I decided to read it again. The story is equal parts fascinating and horrifying at the same time and sounds more like a Hollywood movie then real life. But this actually happened to a real person. It's shocking and obscene what a medical company could do, I wonder how many more cases of similar things we don't know anything about yet?
This book was required reading for a seminar that I attend on leadership in education in neurodevelopmental disorders.
- I felt woefully uneducated because I have never heard of the HeLa cells, & I have taken several university science courses. I even took a Human Biology course that covered bioethics pretty extensively.
- The book is fairly interesting from a science/historical standpoint. I did not realize that informed consent was not required in medical treatment until pretty late, the 1970s or so! Now, informed consent, IRB's, and HIPAA make up such a large part of what scientists, medical staff, and researchers do, that it was hard to imagine a world without those protections in place.
- It was disturbing at the very end when I found out that certain genes are patented by pharmaceutical companies, basically allowing companies to profit off of needed medical tests and treatment and stopping all other educational researchers from doing independent research on the genes. Such as the test for the very virulent & heritable strands of breast cancer! I do think the capitalization of medical research is unethical and a big problem for the future of medicine. I wish the book had covered this angle more, rather than the "tissue/cell" angle. I don't think I care if a hospital uses my discarded tissues or cells for research, but it would be nice if there was a uniform procedure regarding informed consent, so that people knew that was what was happening when they undergo a procedure. I also don't think cells are "live" or part of a person's "souls," and I am very much in favor or stem-cell research.
- This book was way too long and some parts definitely dragged.
- The best "human interest" part of the story, in my opinion, was Henrietta's daughter, Deborah, trying to find out the story of her mother.
- I HATED the disjointed structure and it bored me to tears at times. Just tell the story and get on with it. Jumping all over place and time and characters is just annoying.
- There is way too much of the author in this nonfiction book. She should have cut herself out completely. She is boring. She is exploitative. It came across as too "oooh englightened white girl finally got the scary black family to trust her" Get over yourself! This irritated me throughout the novel. "Ohhhh it is soooo hard sitting in a fancy hotel room waiting for these people to return my phone calls." If you want to write an autobiography about your time researching/writing the life of Henrietta Lacks, then do that, but don't write a book about Henrietta Lacks that has more Rebecca in it than Henrietta!
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About the Author:
REBECCA SKLOOT is an award-winning science writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine; O, The Oprah Magazine; Discover; and many others. She is coeditor of The Best American Science Writing 2011 and has worked as a correspondent for NPR's Radiolab and PBS's Nova ScienceNOW….
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