The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (Hardcover)
- Category: Science & Nature
- Publisher: Random House (Feb 1, 2010)
Our Shelf Talker
In The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, I have met a woman and her family and am confronted with the dilemma of the benefit to science vs. the pain and dismay of her descendants. This is not easy to read - not because of the difficulty of the science but the philosophical questions of "common good." We should all be aware of the consequences of the advancement of science, the benefits to us all set against the financial gain to a few, and the hardship and confusion that falls to those left behind. A wonderful book, well written - there is no finger pointing here, just a huge quantity of food for thought.- Nancy
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 important 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.
Now Rebecca Skloot takes us on an extraordinary journey, from the "colored" ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital 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.
Now Rebecca Skloot takes us on an extraordinary journey, from the "colored" ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital 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.