Henrietta Lacks was a poor, young African-American mother of
5 when she died of cervical cancer in 1951. The doctors treating her took cells
from her tumor without asking - a common practice. Those cells became the first human cells to
be successfully grown in culture. They became one of the most important tools
in medicine, and have been used in developing the polio vaccine, cloning and
gene mapping, among others. Those cells have been, and
still are, bought and sold by the billions.
Yet, the woman herself has remained almost unknown.
Countless researchers and companies have profited from her cells, but her
family is unable to afford health care. For two decades after her death, they
didn’t even know that her cells were alive and being used.
Rebecca Skloot brings us the story of Henrietta and her
family. There is a lot of scientific information in the book also, but her main
objective in writing the book was to find out who Henrietta Lacks was, and tell
her story.
It is a compelling story, and one that needed to be told. It
made me aware of a lot of medical ethics issues that I was unfamiliar with. It’s
very thought-provoking, yet very readable.
400 pages
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