By Jeanessa Fenderson, Grand Rapids Public Library, Main Branch
Rarely does a scientific cultural study read the way that The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks does. Rebecca Skloot takes the reader neatly from the piqued curiosity of a sixteen-year-old high school student in biology class into the center of the social wrongs of the medical establishment with remarkable ease. This true story reads like a novel thanks to Skloot’s compassionate and thorough research and storytelling abilities.
In 1951, Henrietta Lacks finally decides to get treatment for the “knot up inside of her” that has plagued her for years. She’s poor and black. So, she goes to Johns Hopkins hospital, one of the only hospitals in Maryland that will treat patients like her. There she learns that the knot that has been bothering her is cervical cancer. A sample of those cancer cells is placed in a petri dish and Henrietta is treated for her disease. While Henrietta’s life comes to an end, the life of her cancer cells has just begun.
This is the story of HeLa cells, the immortal human cells that have fueled — and continue to fuel — more than half a century of medical advancements from the polio vaccine to HIV/AIDS research. These cells have produced over 50 million metric tons of material to provide scientists and researchers with an endless supply of human cells for testing vaccines, medicines and treatments for an untold number of diseases. It is the story of one woman’s dogged curiosity and persistent research. It is the story of a social wrong committed against a disadvantaged family. It is also the story of the beauty and complexities of science and human life.
Skloot developed an interest in HeLa cells in her junior year biology class when her instructor told the class about the cells, the name of the woman they belonged to, and her race. With no other information, Skloot’s natural curiousity was raised. Over the years as she established a career for herself as a scientific journalist, she heard about HeLa cells and their role in medical research repeatedly and she made the decision to write about Henrietta Lacks. Skloot scaled the walls of a rightfully defensive and jaundiced American family and those of the medical establishment to shed light on just who Henrietta Lacks was, how her cells came to be a basis of modern medical science and what effect this had on the family she left behind.
