The Fault in Our Stars by John Green sparked my curiosity in something I’ve never been too interested in before: science. After hearing about the medical conditions faced by Hazel and Augustus Waters, I became immensely interested in anything having to do with medicine, disease, and treatments, which is what led me to choose The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot as the next book on The Bookworm Belle reading list.
I tend to radiate toward fiction reads, but I have to confess that this non-fiction biography centered on science was quite refreshing and hard to put down. I believe the main reason it captivated me was because of the narrative voice Skloot chose when she wrote the biography focused on the story of Henrietta Lacks and HeLa cells. Not only is it easy to read, but it’s also interesting for someone who doesn’t necessarily gravitate to science due to the emotional backstory of the Lacks family that is included throughout the biography. You immediately feel sympathy and compassion towards the Lacks family and the hardships they’ve endured because of HeLa cells while also understanding the medical breakthrough that was, and still is, HeLa cells.
Rebecca Skloot spent years researching and compiling the real story behind Henrietta Lacks, her family, and HeLa cells. She spoke to numerous members of the Lacks family as well as the hospital that treated Henrietta Lacks in an effort to share her story with the millions of people who have been helped by HeLa cells.
Why you should read it: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a story that deserves to be read. There are mixed reviews about this biography — some people really enjoy it (like me) while others have voiced the opinion that Skloot spends too much time inscribing the relationships she eventually made with the Lacks family. I disagree with the latter opinion because I believe that Skloot’s story is a vital part of authenticating the information she uncovers from the Lacks family, thus validating the story further and giving credibility to a narrator who you are supposed to feel connected with. While I was reading, I felt like I was Rebecca Skloot. I wanted to find the story and connect with these people on a personal level. You should read this book to form your own opinion on Rebecca Skloot’s style of writing, but you should primarily read it to give Henrietta Lacks the attention she deserves in a modern medical world that is indebted to her revolutionary cells.
From the back cover: “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.
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.
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.”