The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

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 enslaved 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 quarters for enslaved people, 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 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.

For the Reading Challenge(s):
2024 Audiobook Challenge
2024 Nonfiction Reader Challenge

The Reason

It was a big deal when it came out, and I had it on my TBR, but it’s taken me years to finally get to it!

The Quotes

“She’s the most important person in the world and her family living in poverty. If our mother is so important to science, why can’t we get health insurance?”

“But today when people talk about the history of Hopkins’s relationship with the black community, the story many of them hold up as the worst offense is that of Henrietta Lacks—a black woman whose body, they say, was exploited by white scientists.”

“Henrietta’s cells have now been living outside her body far longer than they ever lived inside it.”

“Whether you think the commercialization of medical research is good or bad depends on how into capitalism you are.”

The Narrator(s)

Cassandra Campbell and Bahni Turpin. The narrators were amazing, I loved listening to the audiobook and the production was really good.

My Thoughts

It’s hard to know where to begin. I had so many conflicting feelings while reading this book. The HeLa cells have done so much good for the medical science industry, but at the cost of exploiting vulnerable people for the benefit of a select few. It’s even worse to think about now because the medical industry has only gotten more exploitative in the way they markup the cost of healthcare and very much needed lifesaving medication. It isn’t the layperson holding back medical progress but rather the greedy CEOs of the medical industry.

There’s so much more to say about unethical practices in regards to the HeLa cells and so many other instances in medical history, some of which are highlighted in this book. It is so infuriating to read about them, and it seems that many of these medical practitioners were never made to answer for any of it. Perhaps this hits a little close to home at this time, considering what’s been happening recently.

My favorite part of the book was the focus on the real humans who were impacted by these unethical practices. I was very pulled into the story of the lives of Henrietta Lacks’ children in the aftermath of her death, and with dealing with unanswered questions for decades about what happened to their mother and her cells. I feel like Skloot did an amazing job telling the story, keeping to the integrity of the facts while respecting the wishes of the Lacks family. I haven’t watched the movie, but I’m very curious to see it.

My Rating

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.

Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?