Henrietta Lacks’ Miraculous Contribution to Medicine
In 1951, before Henrietta Lacks died of cervical cancer in the Johns Hopkins Hospital “colored” ward, doctors took a small sample of her tumor. The tissue sample, taken without Lacks’ knowledge, stunned scientists when the cells successfully grew in the research lab. This marked the first time a line of human cells had survived without a human body. Lacks’ cells, later known as HeLa, proved extremely robust and flourished in the lab environment. Since their initial harvest, at least 50 million metric tons of the cells have been grown, and have contributed to advances and breakthroughs in the treatment of diseases like polio and AIDS. Yet, Lacks’ family were never told of (or compensated for) this research, and only learned of her miraculous afterlife in the 1970′s when the scientists at Johns Hopkins contacted the family in hopes of further testing. Science writer Rebecca Skloot combines Lacks’ personal history and her family’s reaction to the situation, along with scientific accounts, to tell a compelling story in her new book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (Crown, 330pgs).
Though Lacks’ life has been recorded in previous books and documentaries, none have delved as deeply into her family. Skloot worked on the book for a decade, gaining the family’s trust and convincing them to tell their story of anger, frustration and deceit. The author uses Lacks’ case to address topics of bioethics, class and race. Lacks’ daughter Deborah emerges as one of the main voices in the book, who along with Skloot, got to know her mother better during the writing process. “Truth be told, I can’t get mad at science, because it help people live,” says Deborah. Yet, she continues, “I would like some health insurance so I don’t got to pay all that money every month for drugs my mother cells probably helped make.”
