The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Henrietta Lacks was a poor, black woman with 5 kids who worked in the tobacco fields before moving with her husband to the steel mill country during WWII. Henrietta was diagnosed with cervical cancer and was treated with radium (the standard treatment in those days). But it didn’t help and she died. After she died, our story begins. Her cancerous cervix was sent down to a lab in the hospital where they were attempting to grow human cells in a lab. Henrietta’s cells (named He-La after her name) were put into a culture and grew. The first successful growth of human cells in a lab.
From then, the success of the He-La cells grew as they were sent to labs across the country. The process of growing the cells in the lab became more standardized. The first big success with them was with help develop a polio vaccine. From there the cells were used for everything: sent into space, in a nuclear explosion, discovering number of chromosomes, everything. But with success came disappointing failures. Attempts to grow other cells in lab cultures always ended up with the cells turning into cancer. The He-La cells were so successful that they outcompeted any other cells and were so prevalent that they had infiltrated almost all cultures. The cells were helping change medicine and the world
But the Lacks family was never told. No one told them that their wife and mother’s cancer had probably saved thousands (if not millions) of lives. They were lied to repeatedly to get more cells from family members. They were lied to about how Henrietta died. Rebecca Skloot spent years researching and getting to know the family members to tell this wonderful story. The book is about the cells and the family and the effect of of the lies on their lives. Highly recommended.