The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a science biography book for adults that was given to me by one of my favorite teachers. Henrietta Lacks grew up on a poor tobacco farm in Virginia, and had her first child at the age of 14 with several more over the course of her life. Her family eventually moved to Baltimore, Maryland, where she was diagnosed with cervical cancer at Johns Hopkins. Her doctor took samples of her cancerous cells without Henrietta's consent, and she soon died at the age of 31 in 1951. These cells are the foundation for the field of virology and human genetics fields as we know it today. No human cell line can replicate like hers or share similar immortality, because of how her HPV-induced cancer resulted in genetic mutations. Her family had no idea until over 20 years later, with her 22 descendants incredibly poor and locked out of the billions being profited off buying and selling her cells for research. Today, her family has been suing research and pharmaceutical companies for share of profit.
This is not simply a book about cellular biology, or the science of virology and cancer, nor just the ethical questions to how potentially groundbreaking research is conducted and communicated, or the treatment of black Americans by healthcare systems. This book tells the life of a woman who is "the mother of modern medicine" and her family's story, faced with significant challenges like poverty, hearing loss, abuse, and the lack of transparency in their mother's death. Readers become invested in the future of the real characters. For a nonfiction book, it sure reads like a fiction one for the amount of significant detail and imagery. This is even more impressive considering many of the people featured are no longer alive. I also enjoyed the passages in the present about Rebecca's interviews and the process of writing the story. The structure of the book flipping between the past and the present would be confusing if not for the lovely division of the each chapter stating what years it describes, and Skloot did a good job of balancing staying on topic but also including several other interesting points, like the history of Johns Hopkins and commercialization of medical research, which inevitably happened although seemingly not intentional.
I also appreciated that while the author did not shy away from scientific details of the research using her cells, Rebecca mostly condensed the information into a digestible amount for those not scientifically knowledgeable or have ever taken a biology class. As someone in this field, I found the contamination of her cells all over the world a fascinating biosecurity issue, and I would highly recommend this book to anyone who does cellular or tissue research or works in the medical field. It is a shame that this book is no longer required reading; it used to be in one of the 100 level biology courses, but not anymore and the books just sat collecting dust with all the other formerly used textbooks (which is an entirely separate issue on the impact of digital media on reading and learning).
Title: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Author: Rebecca Skloot
Publisher: Broadway Paperbacks
Pages: 382
Series: No
Rating: 5 Stars
