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The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
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The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (2010) (edit title/settings)

by Rebecca Skloot (Author) (edit contributors)

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Description edit see section history

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... read more

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit see section history

  • - How the cells of Henrietta Lacks have been used by scientists for research over the decades.
  • - A pivotal moment in medical history and the story of the woman whose cells made a difference to millions.
  • - History of stolen cells without which scientific research be very antiquated.

Summary edit see section history

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... read more

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. If you could 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 important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions.

Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave.

Henrietta’s family did not learn of her “immortality” until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists investigating HeLa began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. And though the cells had launched a multimillion-dollar industry that sells human biological materials, her family never saw any of the profits. As Rebecca Skloot so brilliantly shows, the story of the Lacks family—past and present—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 uncover this story, 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 important to medicine, why couldn’t her children afford health insurance?

Intimate in feeling, astonishing in scope, and impossible to put down, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks captures the beauty and drama of scientific discovery, as well as its human consequences.

People edit see section history

  • Henrietta Lacks: The subject of this book. Henrietta was alive from 1920 to 1951. She died of cervical cancer when she was only 31 years old. Cells from her cancerous tumor (HeLa, named after Henrietta) were unique and used to further medical vaccines and other medical research.
  • Dr. George Gey: Using Henrietta's cells provided by Dr. Wharton, Dr. Gey was responsible for developing the strand of immortal cells that became known as HeLa.
  • Dr. Lawrence Wharton: Henrietta's surgeon who, unbeknownst to Henrietta or her family, took a sample of her cancerous cervix cells and sent them to Dr. Gey for his study.
  • Deborah "Dale" Lacks: Henrietta and Day's fourth child
  • Lawrence Lacks: Henrietta and Day's firstborn child
  • David Jr. "Sonny" Lacks: Henrietta and Day's third child
  • Elsie Lacks (born Lucille Elsie Pleasant): Henrietta's second born and eldest daughter. She was institutionalized due to epilepsy and died at age 15.
  • Crazy Joe Grinnan: Cousin of Henrietta
  • Loretta Pleasant: Henrietta's birth name
  • Johnny Pleasant: Henrietta's father
  • David "Day" Lacks: Henrietta's husband and cousin
  • Walter Nelson-Rees: Geneticist who published the names of cell lines contaminated by HeLa.
  • Courtney "Mama" Speed: Owner of Speed's Grocer in Turner Station. She has tried to set up a museum in honor of Henrietta Lacks.
  • Bobbette: Lawrence Lacks' wife
  • Ted Slavin: A patient who produced valuable antibodies and tried to profit from them.
  • Michael Rogers: Rolling Stone reporter who wrote an article about Henrietta Lacks.
  • Stanley Gartler: Scientist that discovered that many cell lines had been contaminated by HeLa.
  • Susan Hsu: Postdoctoral student working for Victor McKusick.
  • Rebecca: The author also becomes a character in the story when she befriends one of Henrietta's daughters.
  • Michael Gold: Author of A Consipracy of Cells where he published information from Henrietta Lack's medical records.
  • Sir Lord Keenan Kester Cofield: An ex-conman who tries to defraud the Lacks family.
  • Sadie: Henrietta's cousin
  • Christoph Lengauer: Researcher using HeLa cells who showed Henrietta's family her cells for the first time.
  • Margaret Gey: Wife of Dr. Gey and surgical nurse. Worked with Dr. Key to try and grow cells outside the human body.
  • Gladys Lacks: Henrietta's sister, who disapproved of Henrietta's marriage to Day
  • John Moore: Cancer patient who sued over the use of his cells. His suit was unsuccessful.
  • Gary: Deborah Lack's cousin in Clover.
  • Victor Mckusick: Geneticist who took samples of blood from the Lacks children to study more about HeLa.
  • Ethel: Abusive aunt that raised the younger Lacks children after their mother died
Show all 29 characters
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Quotes edit see section history

  • “Today, nearly 60 years after Henrietta's death, her body lies in an unmarked grave in Clover, Virginia. But her cells are still among the most widely used in labs worldwide—bought and sold by the billions. Though those cells have done wonders for science, Henrietta—whose legacy involves the birth of bioethics and the grim history of experimentation on African-Americans—is all but forgotten.”
  • “Henrietta's cells have now been living outside her body far longer than they ever lived inside it.”
  • “Pounding in the back of their heads was a gnawing feeling that science and the press had taken advantage of them.”
  • “When an editor who insisted I take the Lacks family out of the book was injured in a mysterious accident, Deborah said that's what happens when you piss Henrietta off.”
  • “Like the Bible said . . . man brought nothing into this world and he'll carry nothing out. Sometime we care about stuff too much. We worry when there's nothing to worry about."”
    Gary Lacks
  • “We'd form a deep personal bond, and slowly, without realizing it, I'd become a character in her story, and she in mine."”
    Rebecca Skloot in speaking about Deborah Lacks
  • “After writing "HeLa," for Henrietta and Lacks, in big black letters on the side of each tube, Mary carried them to the incubator room that Gey had built just like he's built everything else in the lab: by hand and mostly from junkyard scraps, a skill he'd learned from a life-time of making do with nothing.”
  • “Hennie made life come alive -bein with her was like bein with fun," Sadie told me, staring toward the ceiling as she talked. "Hennie just love peoples. She was a person that could realy make the good things come out of you."”
  • “Like I'm always telling my brothers, if you gonna go into history, you can't do it with a hate attitude. You got to remember, times was different."”
    Deborah, "Dale" Lacks
  • “"We're a mess!" she said, pointing to the hives now covering her face. "Lord, I was so anxious last night. I couldn't do anything with myself so I painted my fingernails." She held out her hands for me to see. "I did a horrible job!" she said, laughing. "I think I did it after I took my pill."”
  • “We must not see any person as an abstract. Instead, we must see in every person a universe with its own secrets, with its own treasures, with its own sources of anquish, and with some measure of triumph.”
    Elie Wiesel
  • “He wrongly believed that light could kill cell cultures, so his laboratory looked like the photo negative of a Ku Klux Klan rally, where technicians worked in long black robes, heads covered in black hoods with small slits cut for their eyes. (pg 72)”
Show all 12 quotes from this book

Setting & Locations edit see section history

First Sentence edit see section history

There's a photo on my wall of a woman I've never met, its left corner torn and patched together with tape.

Table of Contents edit see section history

A Few Words About This Book
Prologue: The Woman in the Photograph
Deborah's Voice

Part 1: Life

1. The Exam ... 1951
2. Clover ... 1920-1942
3. Diagnosis and Treatment ... 1951
4. The Birth of HeLa ... 1951
5. "Blackness Be Spreadin All Inside" ... 1951
6. "Lady's on the Phone" ... 1999
7. The Death and Life of Cell Culture ... 1951
8. "A Miserable Specimen" ... 1951
9. Turner Station ... 1999
10. The Other Side of the Tracks ... 1999
11. "The Devil of Pain Itself" ... 1951

Part 2: Death

12. The Storm ... 1951
13. The HeLa Factory ... 1951-1953
14. Helen Lane ... 1953-1954
15. "Too Young to Remember" ... 1951-1965
16. "Spending Eternity in the Same Place" ... 1999
17. Illegal, Immoral, and Deplorable ... 1954-1966
18. "Strangest Hybrid" ... 1960-1966
19. "The Most Critical Time on This Earth Is Now" ... 1966-1973
20. The HeLa Bomb ... 1966
21. Night Doctors ... 2000
22. "The Fame She So Richly Deserves" ... 1970-1973

Part 3: Immortality

23: "It's Alive" ... 1973-1974
24: "Least They Can Do" ... 1975
25: "Who Told You You Could Sell My Spleen?" ... 1976-1988
26: Breech of Privacy ... 1980-1985
27: The Secret of Immortality ... 1984-1995
28: After London ... 1996-1999
29: A Village of Henriettas ... 2000
30: Zakariyya ... 2000
31: Hela, Goddess of Death ... 2000-2001
32: "All That's My Mother" ... 2001
33: The Hospital for the Negro Insane ... 2001
34: The Medical Records ... 2001
35: Soul Cleansing ... 2001
36: Heavenly Bodies ... 2001
37: "Nothing to Be Scared About" ... 2001
38: The Long Road to Clover ... 2009

Where They Are Now
Afterword
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index

Glossary edit see section history

  • HeLa: The name given to the cells taken from Henrietta Lack's cancerous tumor.
  • FISH (fluorescence in situ hybridization): A cytogenetic technique developed by Christoph Lengauer that is used to detect and localize the presence or absence of specific DNA sequences on chromosomes. -Wikipedia
  • HPV: Human papillomavirus.
  • Nuremberg Code: The Nuremberg Code is a set of research ethics principles for human experimentation set as a result of the Subsequent Nuremberg Trials at the end of the Second World War. -Wikipedia

Series & Lists edit see section history

This book is in NPR Summer Books 2010. (authoritative list)

Preceded by In Defense of Food.

This is book 3 of 20 in New York Times Bestsellers - Paperback Nonfiction (Current). (authoritative list)

Preceded by Bossypants, and followed by Outliers.

This is book 10 of 15 in New York Times Bestsellers - Nonfiction (Current). (authoritative list)

Preceded by Bossypants, and followed by Inside Apple: How America's Most Admired--And Secretive--Company Really Works.

This book is in New York Times Bestsellers (Current). (authoritative list)

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. Rebecca Skloot (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: English
Publisher: CROWN
Country: USA
Publication Date: 2010
ISBN: 1400052173
Page Count: 368

Classification edit see section history

  • Library of Congress: RC265.6 L24 S55 2009
  • Dewey: 616.02774092

Notes for Parents edit see section history

Reading Level: Adults

While written in a readable, non-technical manner, the content is best suited for adult level readers.Thoughtful high school readers will find much of interest as well. There is some adult content, (medical information,) and some adult language as well.

Links to Supplemental Material edit see section history

More Books Like This edit see section history

   
  • Medical Apartheid
  • The Secret Life of Bees
  • When You Reach Me
  • The Help
  • Let the Great World Spin
  • My Lobotomy

Books with Additional Background Information edit see section history

   
  • The Immortal Cell: One Scientist's Quest to Solve the Mystery of Human Aging
  • Culturing Life

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