The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
- ISBN13: 9781400052172
- Shape up: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
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 vital tools in medicine. The first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. If you may possibly pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, they’d weigh more than 50 million metric tons—as much as a hundred Empire State Buildings. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb’s effects; helped lead to vital advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions.
Yet Henrietta Lacks remains effectively unknown, buried in an unmarked grave.
Now Rebecca Skloot takes us on an extraordinary journey, from the “colored” ward of Johns Hopkins Sickbay in the 1950s to stark white laboratories with freezers full of HeLa cells; from Henrietta’s small, dying hometown of Clover, Virginia—a land of wooden slave quarters, faith healings, and voodoo—to East Baltimore today, where her children and grandchildren live and struggle with the legacy of her cells.
Henrietta’s family did not learn of her “immortality” until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists investigating HeLa started using her spouse and children in research without informed consent. And though the cells had launched a multimillion-dough industry that sells human biological materials, her family never saw any of the profits. As Rebecca Skloot so brilliantly shows, the tale of the Lacks family—past and bestow—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 reveal this tale, Rebecca became enmeshed in the lives of the Lacks family—especially Henrietta’s daughter Deborah, who was devastated to learn about her mother’s cells. She was consumed with questions: Had scientists cloned her mother? Did it hurt her when researchers infected her cells with viruses and shot them into space? What happened to her sister, Elsie, who died in a mental institution at the age of fifteen? And if her mother was so vital to medicine, why couldn’t her children afford health insurance?
Intimate in feeling, surprising in scope, and impossible to place down, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks captures the beauty and drama of scientific discovery, as well as its human consequences.Amazon.com Review
Amazon Best Books of the Month, February 2010: From a single, abbreviated life grew a seemingly immortal line of cells that made some of the most crucial innovations in modern science possible. And from that same life, and those cells, Rebecca Skloot has fashioned in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks a fascinating and tender tale of medicine and family, of how life is sustained in laboratories and in memory. Henrietta Lacks was a mother of five in Baltimore, a poor African American migrant from the tobacco farms of Virginia, who died from a cruelly aggressive cancer at the age of 30 in 1951. A sample of her cancerous tissue, taken without her knowledge or consent, as was the custom then, turned out to provide one of the holy grails of mid-century biology: human cells that may possibly survive–even thrive–in the lab. Known as HeLa cells, their stunning potency gave scientists a building block for countless breakthroughs, beginning with the cure for polio. Meanwhile, Henrietta’s family continued to live in poverty and frequently poor health, and their discovery decades later of her unknowing contribution–and her cells’ weird survival–left them full of pride, rage, and suspicion. For a decade, Skloot doggedly but compassionately gathered the threads of these tales, slowly gaining the trust of the family even as helping them learn the truth about Henrietta, and with their aid she tells a rich and haunting tale that questions the questions, Who owns our bodies? And who carries our memories? –Tom Nissley
Amazon Exclusive: Jad Abumrad Reviews The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Jad Abumrad is host and creator of the broadcast radio hit Radiolab, now in its seventh season and reaching over a million people monthly. Radiolab combines cold-edge production with a philosophical approach to huge thoughts in science and beyond, and an inventive method of storytelling. Abumrad has won numerous awards, including a National Headliner Award in Radio and an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Science Journalism Award. Read his exclusive Amazon guest review of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks:
Honestly, I can’t presume a better tale.
A detective tale that’s at once mythically large and painfully intimate.
Just the simple facts are hard to judge: that in 1951, a poor black woman named Henrietta Lacks dies of cervical cancer, but pieces of the tumor that killed her–taken without her knowledge or consent–live on, first in one lab, then in hundreds, then thousands, then in giant factories churning out polio vaccines, then aboard rocket ships launched into space. The cells from this one tumor would spawn a multi-billion dough industry and become a foundation of modern science–leading to breakthroughs in gene mapping, cloning and fertility and helping to learn how viruses work and how cancer develops (among a million other things). All of which is to say: the science end of this tale is enough to blow one’s mind aptly out of one’s face.
But what’s truly remarkable about Rebecca Skloot’s book is that we also get the rest of the tale, the part that may possibly have easily remained hidden had she not spent ten years finding it: Who was Henrietta Lacks? How did she live? How she did die? Did her family know that she’d become, in some sense, immortal, and how did that affect them? These are crucial questions, because science should never forget the people who gave it life. And so, what unfolds is not only a reporting tour de force but also a very entertaining account of Henrietta, her ancestors, her cells and the scientists who grew them.
The book ultimately channels its journey of discovery though Henrietta’s youngest daughter, Deborah, who never knew her mother, and who dreamt of one day being a scientist.
As Deborah Lacks and Skloot search for answers, we’re bounced effortlessly from the tiny tobacco-farming Virginia hamlet of Henrietta’s childhood to modern-day Baltimore, where Henrietta’s family remains. By the side of the way, a run of unforgettable juxtapositions: cell culturing bumps into faith healings, cold edge medicine collides with the dark truth that Henrietta’s family can’t afford the health insurance to care for diseases their mother’s cells have helped to cure.
Rebecca Skloot tells the tale with fantastic sensitivity, urgency and, in the end, damn fine writing. I highly urge this book. –Jad Abumrad
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The sample was deeply engaging but I don’t want to buy a crippled e-book. If text-to-speech hadn’t been blocked, I would have bought it.
Rating: 3 / 5
In the very first chapter of this work, Henrietta Flacks and family members are quoted directly in settings and intimate conversations, but no sources are given. Without these substantiations it is fiction and cast doubt upon the credulity of the rest of work. And I so much looked forward to this material.
Rating: 1 / 5
You know you are dealing with evil money hungry Drs. when the Nazis twin experiments sound in line with the theft of this patient’s cells. I disagree with the other reviewers as Lacks was no victim but a fierce mother and courageous patient who not only had to find and diagnose her own tumor but bear medical atrocities and neglect at the hands of yes, American doctors. Skloot is a stellar novelist as in the telling of the howling storm on the day of her funeral just 60 years ago foretells the insane cloning, Obama advocating stem cell nonsense and other joke science that has NO proof per Michael J. Fox that they can cure diddly sit on your heels but let’s steer billions and ignore ethics to advance phony monster mash science. Revolting way to steal from her family when they never got a dime. Shame on us all.
Rating: 5 / 5
I don’t know why this book has such fantastic reviews. I found it tedious and may possibly barely end it at the end. The cell history and research was fascinating but not compelling. The characters were fascinating but again, not compelling.
I don’t know the fantastic reviews on this book, not my cup of tea.
Rating: 1 / 5
This review will probably make some people mad, but I’ll proceed anyway because these issues need to be addressed as there is a correlation between all of the events I am about to mention…..
I was first introduced to the life of Henrietta Lacks during my African American History course in college. The epic journey of Henrietta’s life is priceless, as the cells of her DNA continues to be used in medical breakthroughs for curing many diseases and saving lives, her cells were even sent outer space to conduct studies of how her cells would react to the environment – and the cells of her DNA continued to multiply even as outer space! Scientific research and medical experimentation exposed THE UNIQUE STRAIN OF DNA CONTAINED IN HENRIETTA IS CONTAINED IN ALL BLACK PEOPLE AND NO OTHER RACE ON THE PLANET!
Now I will mention other issues which are linked to Henrietta’s situation:
The global eugenics program, involving eugenicists such as Gregor Mendel, Charles B. Davenport (An American supporter of Eugenics), President Calvin Coolidge, Adolph Hitler, Francis Galton, and the like, was based on their definition of certain people and certain races of people who they falsely claimed to have “predisposed genetic deficiencies”. Part of their ASSumption was that the black race was inferior, and their aim was to clean painstakingly all black people in order to curtail the growth of the black populace worldwide. As for Calvin Coolidge, his attitude was, “America must be kept American. Biological laws show that Nordics deteriorate when mixed with other races”. Their eugenics movement transpired into what is known today as Plotted Parenthood, which was founded by eugenicist Margaret Sanger. As we all know, there are thousands of Plotted Parenthood facilities located throughout the United States, and similar agencies worldwide. The irony of these diabolical eugenicists is even as their aim was/is to reduce the black populace, the strain of cells from the DNA of black fetuses from Plotted Parenthood are used without the patient’s permission for the same madical purposes as what was done to Henrietta Lacks.
Experiments performed with the strain of DNA from Henrietta also made what we all know today as stem cell research. Before the ban of stem cell research that was recently lifted by Obama, researchers exposed the strains of cells from the DNA of black people/black fetuses are the only cells which multiply and thrive successfully. They realized for the cells to thrive successfully, the strain of DNA must come from the original, indigenous people of this earth. This is where philanthropy comes in…..
The heart of focus for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is based on the “development of nations” in Africa. Bill and Melinda Gates are also aware of the unique strains of DNA found only in black people. So below the guise of “philanthropy”, part of their efforts are going towards what Bill Gates calls “DNA sequencing”. So when you hear Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, or any other philanthropists talking about “developing the nations of Africa” (or Haiti for that matter), not only is the land up for grabs, but so are the people. DNA sequencing is their way of owning the people of Africa or any other indigenous black people based on our unique strains of DNA. So as a result of “DNA sequencing”, to the likes of what researchers have done with the cells of Henrietta Lacks and other black people, they are selling the unique strains of African DNA for research and profit.
A group of researchers from Emory University received funding for approximately $20 million towards “medical research” in Ethiopia, which is one of the oldest black civilizations on this earth. Part of their research involves “DNA sequencing” on the strains of DNA of Ethiopians. Part of the funding they received came from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
These people are perfectly aware of the fact that all of us are not the same. So before, during, and after the corporal life of Henrietta Lacks, the saga continues as these “researchers” continue to experiment with the unique strains of DNA found only in black people.
Also, the same deceit and disrespect that was done to Henrietta Lacks and other Africans is also happening in Haiti.
Rating: 5 / 5