Henrietta Lacks was the name of an African-American woman who died of a virulent form of cervical cancer in Baltimore in the early 1950s. What makes her case historically remarkable is that a colony of her cancerous cells were among the first human cells to thrive and multiply outside the body in a petri dish, making them a much sought-after commodity for lab experimentation and scientific discovery. For decades the cell line known as HeLa (for the first letters of her first and last name) made a huge positive impact on the development and advancement of cellular biology. On the flip side, partly due to its remarkable longevity and tenacity, HeLa contaminated other cell lines, ultimately compromising the integrity of experiments and responsible for the loss of millions of dollars in research money.Further controversy surrounds the exploitation of Henrietta Lacks’s cell line without the informed consent of her next of kin, and much of the book chronicles the author’s attempts to win the surviving family’s trust and help them understand exactly what happened to their mother’s cells and in exactly what regard Henrietta Lacks has become immortal, as the title of the book suggests.
This is great scientific writing, but also provides an honest look at a family bulldozed by the modern medical establishment, never quite getting the simple answers to their questions that would help them allay their fears, confusion, and resentment about what had happened to their mother.
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