Published by: Betsy Carrier on 2/2/2011 4:34:11 PM
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a provocative book about cancer, racism, health disparities, scientific ethics and poverty. The woman who provides this book its title, Henrietta Lacks, was a poor Virginia tobacco farmer, the great-great-granddaughter of slaves. Born in 1920, she died from an aggressive cervical cancer at 31, leaving five children.
To scientists, however, Henrietta Lacks almost immediately became known simply as HeLa from the first two letters of her first and last names. Cells from Mrs. Lacks’s cancerous cervix, taken without her knowledge, were the first to grow in culture, becoming “immortal” and changing the face of modern medicine. Bought and sold and shipped around the world for decades, HeLa cells are famous to scientists everywhere. But little has been known, until now, about the unwitting donor of these cells.
The author, Rebecca Skloot, a science journalist who spent 10 years researching the book, writes about Henrietta’s impact on modern medicine. She also tells the story of Mrs. Lacks’s life, from a small-town in Virginia, to the “colored” ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore in the 1950s. The author writes about the history of race and medicine in America and traces events like the shameful Tuskegee project. The book is also a reflection on medical ethics — on the notion of informed consent, and on the issue of who owns human cells. The ironies in the book are clear as Henrietta Lacks’ descendents still cannot afford health insurance today.
This is very well researched and written book, and was selected as one of the 10 best non-fiction books in 2010. The issues raised in the book are very real and will influence the work of health care professionals and researchers as they consider issues of access to care, health care disparities and the ethics of informed consent.
Betsy Carrier
Vice President Member Services
National Association of Public Hospitals
bcarrier@naph.org
202-585-0117