I remember when The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks was something of a new book. I’d see it on book store displays, and for some reason, it never much appealed to me. It was probably due to the fact I wasn’t really reading a lot of science-based books back then. Heck, I still don’t read a lot of those sorts of books now. Regardless, I didn’t bother. In more recent years, as I have been more inclined to seek out ideas outside my usual area of expertise or interest, something like this book became a lot more relevant to my personal interests, so I got a copy. And then some co-workers decided to start a book club with this work as the first selection. Since I already had a copy, I saw no reason not to join up.
I am very glad I did.
It’s hard to say where to begin with a book like The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks because there is so much to this story. The basics is this: Henrietta Lacks was an African American woman without a lot of education. She found herself experiencing intense pain and went to John Hopkins in Baltimore for treatment. The hospital had a section to treat poor minorities in the days when Jim Crow was still very much a thing. The doctor found Henrietta had cervical cancer and gave her the standard treatment. They also took some cells samples. The treatment didn’t work, and Henrietta died at the age of 31, leaving behind a husband, three sons, and two daughters. One of the daughters had developmental issues and was held in a mental hospital until her own death before reaching adulthood. The Lacks family was poor, and their personal tragedies did not stop with Henrietta’s death.
However, the cell samples the doctors took went to a lab that managed to create the first immortal human cell line. Known as HeLa, named as it is for Henrietta herself, these cells would go on to all manner of medical and scientific research, helping to find cures and treatments for diseases while testing the limits of what human cells can go through. The original lab soon learned that once samples were sent out, it was easy for other researchers to simple grow their own, and no one really “owns” the HeLa line today. Meanwhile, Henrietta’s family was living in poverty without any real knowledge of what happened to Henrietta’s cell samples for decades. Skloot herself learned a little about HeLa during a college lecture and essentially set out to tell the whole story in this, her first book.
And “tell the whole story” is an excellent way to define this work. Skloot doesn’t limit herself to the biology and history of the cells. She also digs into Henrietta Lacks’s life, what little she can find out about it, and then the lives of her surviving family members after she died. It’s not a pretty story, and Skloot herself enters the narrative when she approached the family to get their help, eventually winning over Henrietta’s surviving daughter Deborah. The Lackses, paritcularly Deborah, wanted to know what happened to their mother’s cells as much as Skloot did, and Skloot did eventually win at least Deborah’s confidence and trust enough to finish the book.
That’s a vital piece of what makes this book as good as it is. Skloot doesn’t just cover the history of the family and the cell line. She uses the book to show how little patient consent mattered then and still matters today. She discusses racial justice and disparities given the cells did so much for the health of many but not for Henrietta’s own family, and how the Lacks family was hardly the only example of the poor or racial minorities used for medical experiments. She manages to cover the science, the justice, the legality, and the various other factors that all come out in this case while letting the world know Henrietta existed in the first place. Granted, the BBC actually got to this story years earlier by Skloot’s own admission, but given how successful her book has been, I think it can be stated she was far more successful in getting the word out. Regardless, this is a highly readable and informative book that covers a lot of ground, and it is the sort of book I probably should have read years ago as a result.
Grade: A
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