The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks in Daily Show / Colbert Report / Nightly Show / The Opposition

Apr 25, 2010 Judy rated it it was amazing

This is one of the best nonfiction books that I have ever read. I can't recommend it enough. Rebecca Skloot took a footnote from a basic biology book (about the origin of HeLa cells) and turned it into an investigation into the origins of the HeLa cells, the woman behind those original cells, racism, medical ethics, scientific research, and the effect of the HeLa cells on both medicine and on the Lacks family. One of the most powerful threads of the book follows the story of Henrietta Lacks, a p This is one of the best nonfiction books that I have ever read. I can't recommend it enough. Rebecca Skloot took a footnote from a basic biology book (about the origin of HeLa cells) and turned it into an investigation into the origins of the HeLa cells, the woman behind those original cells, racism, medical ethics, scientific research, and the effect of the HeLa cells on both medicine and on the Lacks family. One of the most powerful threads of the book follows the story of Henrietta Lacks, a poor, African-American woman, who died of cancer in the early 1950s. Unknown to Henrietta, doctors at Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland took samples of her initial tumor and, to their surprise, those cells were the first cells to stay alive and continue to develop and divide in the lab and HeLa cells are still alive almost 60 years after Henrietta's death. Using HeLa cells, medical researchers have been able to make amazing strides in research into polio, TB, Aids, and numerous other diseases. In fact, anyone who has seen a doctor since the second half of the 20th century has been impacted by medical research based on studies using HeLa cells. But that is only part of the story. Henrietta's family was never informed by doctors at Johns Hopkins about the importance of HeLa cells in medical research and when information began to leak out about the significance of these "immortal cells", the family was confused, angry, and suspicious. Rebecca Skloot is able to form a relationship with the children of Henrietta Lacks, especially her daughter, Deborah, that gradually leads the family into a greater understanding and appreciation of the place that their mother holds in medical history. One of the great strengths of this book is that the reader is able to understand how the many players in this story interacted or failed to interact with each other over decades. The author also has a gift--she is able to take complex scientific issues and write about them in a way that allows readers to understand the basic scientific principles involved. I only wish that someone like Rebecca Skloot taught some of the science classes that I have taken in the past. Finally, this book raises some important issues about medical ethics in America. Many readers will be struck by the fact that while valuable medical research would not have possible without HeLa cells, the fact also remains that many people have made millions of dollars from that research while the Lacks family was so poor that they were not able to afford medical insurance. Incidentally, the author has established a foundation for the benefit of Henrietta Lacks' family. This is a story that needed to be told and I am grateful that Rebecca Skloot told it. ...more

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Jan 11, 2015 Ezra rated it really liked it

Shelves: read-in-2015, loc-kindle, author-female, biology, racism-slavery, 3-banned

Part biography of Henrietta Lacks and her family. Part explanation of the contribution the cells taken from her have had on medicine. Part memoir of Rebecca on the challenges brought in even getting to write this story. It jumps around quite a bit as it bounds around each of the three parts.

What the Lackses went through depressed me. The callousness of Johns Hopkins does not really surprise me. The enormity of what science was able to accomplish was amazing. But the scientific misunderstandings ...more

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Dec 05, 2012 Cecilia rated it it was amazing

Great story, good writing & research, great book. Science writers will study this book for years to come.

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Apr 14, 2011 Jennifer rated it really liked it

Excellent. Now that I'm more aware of all that goes into a research study - the consents, the IRB approval, etc etc - I found this book so shocking when I realize that we really don't have any right to our tissues or blood once they are separated from us. Lots of discussion needs to continue there!
In addition, the Lacks family story is told so well in this book, and I felt that I gained some knowledge in regard to cancer studies.
Very highly recommended. ...more

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Dec 29, 2011 Pang rated it it was amazing

Shelves: book-club, nonfiction

Wow, what a story! When I first heard about the book, it didn't sound interesting to me. A woman's cells were being taken from her without her consent and now the family had found out about it. "So what?," I thought. Another story of someone suing someone for something. Blah, blah, blah. Boy, I was so wrong about it!

I must say that the author does an excellent job of telling the story. She kept my interest through out the book. I also learned more about various medical researches, which some wer Wow, what a story! When I first heard about the book, it didn't sound interesting to me. A woman's cells were being taken from her without her consent and now the family had found out about it. "So what?," I thought. Another story of someone suing someone for something. Blah, blah, blah. Boy, I was so wrong about it!

I must say that the author does an excellent job of telling the story. She kept my interest through out the book. I also learned more about various medical researches, which some were really amazing. It left me what I think about the subject of someone taken my cells without my consent in the name of research, however. Sure, it's going on now without my knowledge. But what if I come to find out that someone has been making money off of my dead mother?! I'm not sure how I would feel. In the Lacks' case, not only that their mother was dead, their lives had been hard after she was gone. Their experiences with Ethel sure weren't pleasant ones. It only left the children longing for their mother even more. They just wanted to understand. My heart really go out to them.

One of the things that will stay with me is the manner in which Henrietta has died. The pain and suffering Henrietta experienced was just gut-wrenching to read. The cancer that took her life was one that no one had ever seen before (as one of the doctors treating her admitted years later.) The tumor spread so fast in her body, and may be that's why HeLa is "immortal" and multiplies like weed. Henrietta didn't stand a chance against it.

The official cause of Henrietta's death was terminal uremia: blood poisoning from the buildup of toxins normally flushed out of the body in urine. The tumors had completely blocked her urethra, leaving her doctors unable to pass a catheter into her bladder to empty it. Tumors the size of baseballs had nearly replaced her kidneys, bladder, ovaries, and uterus. And her other organs were so covered in small white tumors that looked as if someone had filled her with pearls.

Another one is the treatments that many black people received back in the forties and fifties. It's not entirely news to me, but it still makes me pause when I read about it. Especially how Elsie Lacks was treated. One point Deborah said that Elsie was probably deaf and no one knew, since her and her brothers all have hearing problems due from the fact that Day and Henrietta were cousins.

It was a different time then... How far have we come, and how much knowledge have we gained.
...more

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Aug 19, 2010 Jessica rated it it was amazing

Shelves: non-fiction, biography, 2010

I had to wait ages to get a copy of this from the library, and it was totally worth the wait. Very compelling - almost read like a novel. Sometimes uplifting and sometimes heartbreaking, I'll be thinking about this book for a while. ...more

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Jun 08, 2010 Jennifer W rated it it was amazing

Shelves: non-fiction

A great book, although I sometimes had a hard time reading it because of the subject matter. The author, Skloot, does a fabulous job of explaining the science, the times, and the family members, often all at the same time. More than once I picked this book up only intending to read a chapter or two, and before I knew it, 50 pages had flown by. I'm so thankful for Henrietta's (and her family's) sacrifice, even if they didn't know they were making it, but I think it is an absolute sin that her chi ...more

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Apr 05, 2012 Linda rated it it was amazing

Shelves: non-fiction

This is a must read. The bioethics issues drive the whole conversation. The book reads well but also informs the reader about the chronology, laws and evolution of some of the ethical issues in tissue and medical research. This is un-explored territory for most people. Rebecca Skloot makes the dense and scientific readable and human. And, for me, it brings home the point that everyone deserves and should have reliable health insurance. Everyone.

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