The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

I ordered this book to read for one of my Ethics classes. I was worried about so much assigned reading to complete in one week, but it turned out to be a book that you just can’t put down.

It still amazes me that this is a woman’s real life story, the story of her family, and how they have impacted science and anyone who works or benefits from the use of cellular research. That means just about every single person is connected to Henrietta in one way or another.

This was a great book that I’m so glad I read. I learned a lot and it kept me entertained and fascinated for days. It will really change your perspective and make you appreciate this woman’s contribution to our scientific and health fields.

I don’t like how this was pitched as “being through the eyes of her daughter”, when the book is clearly written through the eyes of the author. It is a good read, but make no mistake about this: It is a story of a black family told from the point of view of a white woman author. Much like “The Help”. It’s interesting enough, but I was disappointed by the lack of detail and sensitivity to issues with race and class- it is clearly told from the point of view of white privilege.

From the very beginning there was something uncanny about the cancer cells on Henrietta Lackss cervix. Even before killing Lacks herself in 1951, they took on a life of their own. Removed during a biopsy and cultured without her permission, the HeLa cells (named from the first two letters of her first and last names) reproduced boisterously in a lab at Johns Hopkins the first human cells ever to do so. HeLa became an instant biological celebrity, traveling to research labs all over the world. Meanwhile Lacks, a vivacious 31-year-old African-American who had once been a tobacco farmer, tended her five children and endured scarring radiation treatments in the hospitals colored ward.
In The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot introduces us to the real live woman, the children who survived her, and the interplay of race, poverty, science and one of the most important medical discoveries of the last 100 years. Skloot narrates the science lucidly, tracks the racial politics of medicine thoughtfully and tells the Lacks familys often painful history with grace. She also confronts the spookiness of the cells themselves, intrepidly crossing into the spiritual plane on which the family has come to understand their mothers continued presence in the world. Science writing is often just about the facts. Skloots book, her first, is far deeper, braver and more wonderful.
This work has the most human of stories at its core, and never deviates from that important, and often heartbreaking, humanity. When science appears, it does so effortlessly, with explanations of cell anatomy or techniques like fluorescence in situ hybridization seamlessly worked into descriptions of the coloured wards of Johns Hopkins hospital to Lackss hometown of Clover, Virginia.
But The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is not a comfortable read. I visibly winced at descriptions of Henriettas blackened, burned skin after multiple rounds of devastating radiation treatments. I put the book down with a heavy sigh after reading about the experiments that black Americans have been unwittingly subjected to over the years. I cried twice, at events that I cant talk about without seriously spoiling the book. But it is uplifting too, particularly in a stand-out chapter where Henriettas children, Deborah and Zakariyya, visit a cancer researcher to see their mothers cells under a microscope.

All of this is to be expected of a book that refuses to shy away from tackling important themes the interplay between science and ethics, the question of who owns our bodies, and the history of racism in the US. And yet for all its grand scope, skilful writing and touching compassion, there is one simple element that makes As a final thought, I was struck by the parallels between Henriettas cells and her story. Henriettas entire family history was eventually condensed into a small sliver of cells that you could carry in a glass vial. They have achieved immortality, used by scientists throughout the world. Similarly, her entire life has been condensed into a moving tale and an exceptional book that you could read in a comfortable day. By right, it will achieve the same immortal status.

I was mesmerized by this book.

In 1951 Henrietta Lacks, an African-American woman suffering from severe abdominal pain and bleeding, entered Baltimores John Hopkins Hospital, where the wards were still segregated, and the care of Black patients was rumored to be inferior to that accorded Whites. Baltimores Black community even claimed that Hopkins kidnapped people in the dead of night, right off the citys streets, to serve as unwilling subjects of gruesome research projects. Unsurprisingly, Black patients like Henrietta went to Hopkins only when they were critically ill or dying.

Henrietta was quickly diagnosed with an aggressive form of cervical cancer. During her radium treatments, cells from Henriettas cervix were harvested and givenwithout her true understanding, her family would later maintainto Dr. George Gey, a Hopkins researcher who was trying to create the worlds first line of immortal cells, or cells that could regenerate themselves indefinitely.

Dr. Gey was successful and the HeLa cells were born. The immortal HeLa cells became a medical miracle that would give rise to life-saving drugs like the polio vaccine and various cancer therapies.

Within weeks of her entering Hopkins, Henrietta died, and her name was quickly lost to history. Some later articles said her real name was Helen Lane, but there was little immediate interest in discovering the true identify or life story of the woman behind the HeLa cells. Her husband and children were left uninformed even as to her diagnosis and had no idea what happened to her during the autopsy that Dr. Gey performed.

At the heart of Rebecca Skloots story is the desperate longing of Henriettas children to know who their mother really was. Skloot focuses on daughter Deborah, who has only a lock of her mothers hair, a treasured possession that she keeps in the family Bible. Deborah pursues obtaining official recognition of her mothers contribution to science and worries that her mothers cells experience pain in the research she imagines as inflicted upon them.

Henrietta had been born in Clover, VA, in the home-house that had served as her ancestors slave cabin. She was a wife, a loving mother to four children, a woman who adored dancing, and a caretaker in both her family and her community. In her life, her greatest journey was from Clover to Baltimores Turner Station neighborhood, but her cells would travel to outer space on rockets, studying the impact of space travel on human beings.

The HeLA cells were harvested and grown just before the birth of the Civil Rights movement, and at the confluence of so many issues: healthcare parity for impoverished, minority, and disadvantaged patients; medical privacy; and especially, informed consent. Her husband and children have long maintained that Henrietta never donated her cells. They wonder why her cells could jump start a multi-billion-dollar industry, while they themselves could never even obtain health insurance. Most poignantly, they struggle even to pay for the hearing aids they need to treat their congenital deafness.

Fans of nonfiction and medical science histories will love this book. I certainly did.

What a great book. My previous boss gave me a copy to read and I then bought a copy off of Amazon. I’m sending it to my cousin. Its a must read for anyone, regardless of race or ethnicity.

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