Book Review - The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

The Immortal Life of Henrietta LacksThe Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I found this book while trying to find a non-fiction selection for book club but wasn't too sure it would provide enough discussion material. I was wrong. There are a lot of issues brought up in this book from Jim Crow laws, patient privacy, tissue and genetic testing, scientific research and racism.

Lacks was a relatively poor, undereducated Black woman who was treated at John Hopkins for a cervical tumor. Tissue samples were taken from her before (and after) she died and her live cancerous cells were found to be able to persist and grow in a lab setting. Her cells (called HeLa) became the basis for an enormous amount of research and directly helped to test Salk's polio vaccine. It's an amazing scientific story.

What's also amazing was Skloot's efforts to research Lack and her family. She wanted to include them to make it a complete story. They didn't even know about Lack's cells prolific use and Skloot had to not only gain their trust but also educate them on what it all actually meant. That was a big challenge considering their lack of education and exposure to the world.

Fascinating story.

View all my reviews

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

TV At Its Finest

I was talking to someone today who didn’t know who Bob Newhart was. I cut him some slack because he’s a youngster and didn’t grow up in the U.S. I told him about The Bob Newhart show and how it became a college drinking game and about Newhart, "Hi, I'm Larry; this is my brother Darryl, and this is my other brother Darryl." He was going to go to Wikipedia and do some research. The conversation got me thinking. Back in the day (like when dinosaurs were alive and I was young and there were only four channels on TV), we caught a lot of reruns of what are now considered classic TV. Especially, if you were a latchkey kid like I was, there wasn’t a lot going on in the afternoon/early evening so it was either soap operas or reruns unless you were allowed to be outside and play. And, of course, during summer vacation you had even more time to watch the boob tube. Here’s what I remember watching during those years: Gilligan’s Island, Big Valley (I’m still looking for my very own N...
Read more

February 2020

Image
Most of 2020 sucked. But, there were some good moments that made memories to cling to. I'm going to review some of those moments from each month. (Disclaimer - my memory isn't what it used to be so this is my story and I'm sticking to it regardless of reality.) I moved into my house in May of 2019 and it was already hot out so I used the Arizona summer as an excuse not to do anything to my patio or yard. I don't recall what excuse I used to justify ignoring the both in the fall and winter. Let's go with complete laziness. It's entirely plausible. However, I had to get on the stick and pretty it up because I had a bunch of company scheduled for the spring. The first thing I did was get some inexpensive chairs from Target for my beat up table. I honestly thought I could jam them into my car. I really, really did. One would never guess I was a Tetris master. After several futile attempts, this is how it ultimately went down. Adam (answering cell): Hi, Kathy! Me: Hi...
Read more