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| Type | Hardcover |
| Release Date | 2010-02-02 |
| List Price | $26.00 |
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| Ethics General AAS Textbooks Trade-In African-American & Black Medical Women General Virginia Cancer Medical Ethics Research History of Science Hardcover Printed Books All product Books |
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- ISBN13: 9781400052172
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists recognize her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells—taken not including her knowledge—became one of the much important tools in medicine. The first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for extra than sixty years. If you could pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, they’d weigh extra 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 results; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been purchased 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 together with freezers full of HeLa cells; from Henrietta’s small, dying hometown of Clover, Virginia—a land of wooden slave quarters, faith healings, and voodoo—to East Baltimore today, where her kids and grandchildren exist and struggle together with the legacy of her cells.
Henrietta’s family did not study of her “immortality” until extra than twenty years afterwards her death, when scientists investigating HeLa began utilizing her husband and kids in research not including informed consent. And though the cells had launched a multimillion-dollar industry this 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 dark 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—particularly Henrietta’s daughter Deborah, who was devastated to study concerning her mother’s cells. She was consumed together with questions: Had scientists cloned her mother? Did it harm her when researchers infected her cells together 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 kids manage to pay for 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. |
Amazon Excellent Books of the Month, February 2010: From a single, abbreviated life grew a seemingly immortal line of cells this made some of the much crucial improvements in modern technology possible. And from this same life, and those cells, Rebecca Skloot has fashioned in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks a fascinating and moving story of medicine and family, of how life is sustained in laboratories and in memory. Henrietta Lacks was a mother of five in Baltimore, a poor African American migrant from the tobacco farms of Virginia, who died from a cruelly aggressive cancer at the age of 30 in 1951. A sample of her cancerous tissue, taken not including her knowledge or consent, as was the custom then, turned out to offer one of the holy grails of mid-century biology: human cells this could survive--even thrive--in the lab. Known as HeLa cells, their spectacular potency gave scientists a building block for countless breakthroughs, beginning together with the cure for polio. Meanwhile, Henrietta's family continued to exist in poverty and frequently poor health, and their discovery decades later of her unknowing contribution--and her cells' strange survival--left them full of pride, anger, and suspicion. For a decade, Skloot doggedly but compassionately gathered the threads of these stories, slowly gaining the trust of the family while helping them study the truth concerning Henrietta, and together with their aid she tells a rich and haunting story this asks the questions, Who owns our bodies? And who carries our memories? --Tom Nissley
Amazon Special: Jad Abumrad Reviews The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Jad Abumrad is host and creator of the public radio hit Radiolab, now in its seventh season and reaching over a million people monthly. Radiolab combines cutting-edge production together with a philosophical approach to big ideas in technology and beyond, and an inventive method of storytelling. Abumrad has won numerous awards, counting a National Headliner Prize in Radio and an American Association for the Advancement of Technology (AAAS) Technology Journalism Prize. Read his special Amazon guest review of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks:
Honestly, I can't imagine a better tale. A detective story this's at one time mythically large and painfully intimate. Just the neat facts are hard to think: this in 1951, a poor black woman named Henrietta Lacks dies of cervical cancer, but pieces of the tumor this killed her--taken not including her knowledge or consent--exist on, first in one lab, then in hundreds, then thousands, then in giant factories churning out polio vaccines, then aboard rocket ships launched into space. The cells from this one tumor would spawn a multi-billion dollar industry and become a foundation of modern technology--leading to breakthroughs in gene mapping, cloning and fertility and helping to discover how viruses work and how cancer develops (among a million other things). All of which is to say: the technology end of this story is enough to blow one's intellect right out of one's face. But what's truly remarkable concerning Rebecca Skloot's book is this we in addition get the rest of the story, the part this could have effortlessly remained concealed had she not spent ten years unearthing it: Who was Henrietta Lacks? How did she exist? How she did die? Did her family recognize this she'd become, in some sense, immortal, and how did this affect them? These are crucial questions, for the reason that technology should never not recall the people who gave it life. And so, what unfolds is not only a reporting tour de force but in addition a very entertaining account of Henrietta, her ancestors, her cells and the scientists who grew them. The book ultimately channels its journey of discovery though Henrietta's youngest daughter, Deborah, who never knew her mother, and who dreamt of one day being a scientist. As Deborah Lacks and Skloot search for answers, we're bounced effortlessly from the tiny tobacco-farming Virginia hamlet of Henrietta's childhood to modern-day Baltimore, where Henrietta's family remains. Along the way, a series of unforgettable juxtapositions: cell culturing bumps into faith healings, cutting edge medicine collides together with the dark truth this Henrietta's family can't manage to pay for the health insurance to care for diseases their mother's cells have helped to cure. Rebecca Skloot tells the story together with excellent sensitivity, urgency and, in the end, damn fine writing. I highly recommend this book. --Jad Abumrad
Look Inside The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks Click on thumbnails for big pictures  |  |  |  |  | | Henrietta and David Lacks, circa 1945. | Elsie Lacks, Henrietta’s older daughter, concerning five years before she was committed to Crownsville State Hospital, together with a diagnosis of “idiocy.” | Deborah Lacks at concerning age four. | The home-house where Henrietta was raised, a four-room log cabin in Clover, Virginia, this one time served as slave quarters. (1999) | Main Street in downtown Clover, Virginia, where Henrietta was raised, circa 1930s. |
 |  |  |  |  | | Margaret Gey and Minnie, a lab technician, in the Gey lab at Hopkins, circa 1951. | Deborah together with her kids, LaTonya and Alfred, and her second husband, James Pullum, in the mid-1980s. | In 2001, Deborah developed a severe case of hives afterwards learning upsetting new information concerning her mother and sister. | Deborah and her cousin Gary Lacks standing in front of drying tobacco, 2001. | The Lacks family in 2009. |
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Customer Reviews |
 Excellent Read! 2010-03-11 |
| By N. C. (NW Pa) |
| This book was an excellent read. All the complicated jargon was kept to a minimum, and the medical/legal terms were fully explained. Although the book skips around in time, the story was easy to follow. I don't usually read books in one sitting, since leisure time is short, but this book was devoured in only a few hours. Skloot's first book is a real winner, and I can't wait to read her next work. Great job! |
 Truth will out! 2010-03-10 |
| By Anne L. Pemberton (Wilsons, VA) |
| This book held me spell bound not only while reading it, but since. I feel the urge to get to know the wonderful author who did so much searching and coaxing with the family, overcoming their concerns, to tell us about Henrietta Lacks. I have included a page on Henrietta Lacks under Famous Americans on my website. I want children to learn about the woman who made so many medical advances possible. [...] |
| just a note 2010-03-10 |
| By Lee (Houston Tx) |
I have only read the reviews, trying to decide if I want to read this book.
I think I need to read the book just to make sure the author makes a note that cells are no longer used for research without a patient's permission (from the reviews, it sounds like this bit of info is missing).
'paying' for a patient's contribution is not even close to being practical. First of all, turning a cancer biopsy into a cell line isn't a sure thing. Many stop growing after a few passages and won't survie in cell culture. Second of all, the researchers themselves are not making money off of those contributions. If a cell line does become useful and is made available commercially, patient privacy (HIPAA laws) prevent anyone from being able to connect that cell line to the original patient.
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| Amazing book that straddles many different genres and does each one flawlessly 2010-03-10 |
| By WingsandRings |
This is an amazing, groundbreaking book. Though I've listed it under "biographies and memoirs," that really doesn't do the book justice. It's part biography, part science, part ethics and philosophy. Rebecca Skloot seamlessly weaves the stories of Henrietta, her family, her cells, her doctors, and her cells' impact on science and ethics. The biographical parts are written with a blunt but sensitive pen, the science is explained clearly enough so that even someone like me -- who hasn't taken biology since 9th grade -- can follow it, if not truly grasp the deeper implications of it, and the ethical issues are laid out as precisely and clearly as possible.
I've never seen a book like this, that so easily and completely straddles the line between biography, science textbook, journalism, and metaphysical pondering. You know how Goodreads always asks "Who would you recommend this to?" I can't think of a single person who wouldn't connect with this book in some way, even if only for the ethical implications that we all have tissue taken from us, and none of us have a say in where it goes.
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| Excellent Book! 2010-03-09 |
| By Canadian American (Illinois) |
| I am a scientist with a graduate degree however I was not aware of the vast impact of HeLa cells. The human element to this story is amazing. I liked that the book is a mix of the contributions of HeLa cells, a historical account of the family and also brings up a lot of interesting bioethical questions. The author has obviously done extensive research and was very detailed in her account. The writing is not the most polished but considering the amount of work and dedication and that this is Rebecca's first book I found it a very powerful read. If you are interested in science in any way buy this book! |
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