The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Rebecca Skloot
last update: 2025-03-29
HeLa Cells, as they’re called by the science community. Has been through it all, exposed to radiation, injected with virus, exposed in space, treated with chemical burn. All of modern medicine depends on HeLa cells to create the medicine. HeLa cells are what are used to test vaccines, chemicals, and physics to see hwo humans cells would work under certain conditions, HeLa cells are being manufactured around the world in troves.
But who was HeLa? what was her backstory? how did the HeLa cells came to be? The author does an incredible journalistic effort to answer these questions.
She paints Henrietta Lacks story in incredible detail. From Henrietta’s childhood days to her death to tracing Henrietta’s Long lost child at a mental asylum.
The book is rich on details and creates profound questions about research ethics and cultural contradictions. It is incredible how one person’s sacrifice became a families struggle through existence. Deborah’s mental breakdown and her episodes through depression are testaments to that.
This book was powerful in ways that I did not know was possible.
There is reference to the Adam Curtis Documentary in the book, which I also saw and I’m glad it puts faces to the characters in the book and the family themselves.
There is also a recent netflic move of the same name, “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” is also very famous.
It is important to respect the individual suffering despite the societal benefit.