the immortal life of henrietta lacks
Rebecca Skloot
March 15, 2025 · 241 words · 2 min read · book, learning
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.
Frodo: “It’s a pity Bilbo didn’t kill Gollum when he had the chance.”
Gandalf: “Pity? It’s a pity that stayed Bilbo’s hand. Many that live deserve death. Some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them, Frodo? Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. Even the very wise cannot see all ends. My heart tells me that Gollum has some part to play in it, for good or evil, before this is over. The pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many.”
Frodo: “I wish the Ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.”
Gandalf: “So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world, Frodo, besides that of evil. Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, in which case you were also meant to have it. And that is an encouraging thought.” ― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring