The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is powered by Skloot’s forceful urge to display what it takes to tell this story properly – starting with those most deeply affected by the experience, and working outwards from there. With a credit card and a signature on a materials transfer agreement, you can buy a vial of HeLa cells for $256.00.įirst encountered in a high school bio class, the story of HeLa apparently left an indelible mark on Skloot – an imprint that recognizes its more traumatic counterparts in the Lacks family. Hopkins never marketed HeLa cells but several other corporations continue to do so. HeLa cells were first used to develop the Salk polio vaccine in the mid-1950s, and then became omnipresent in research labs. These imperishable cells allowed virologists to conduct formerly impossible research. Gey named the cells after her – HeLa – and began to make them available to researchers around the world. Henrietta’s ex vivocancer cells grew at unprecedented rates.
George Gey, the head of tissue research at Hopkins, who had been trying for years to develop line of immortal cancer cells in search of a cure for the disease. Shortly thereafter, a second sample was given to Dr. There was no requirement for “informed consent” at that time. Howard Jones took a sample from her tumor without her knowledge or the permission of her family. Before she died on Octoat the age of 31, Dr. Just after the birth of her fifth child, doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore diagnosed Henrietta Lacks, a 31-year old African-American woman, with cervical cancer and treated her with inter-uterine radium and then radiation. Skloot covers all of this – but her book is compelling not only or even mainly for its content but its narrative art.įor starters, here is the basic story of Henrietta Lacks as usually told – in other words, beginning with her death. In a sense, Henrietta’s story has never been written until now – because it can’t be told meaningfully without exposing issues of race, class, and institutional paternalism. While adding to the facts, Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is driven by an ambition to clarify Henrietta’s significance, to reveal and heal damage, and to educate and entertain a popular audience about a remarkable episode in medical science of continuing importance. Parts of the story of Henrietta Lacks have been told before – in a 1976 Rolling Stone feature, a 1986 university press title, a 1996 BBC program, in numerous newspaper and magazine articles through the years, and at symposia and conferences.
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