Recently recognized as one of the best books of the year by Amazon.com, Oprah, NPR, and the New York Times, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, will take you on a journey that fascinate, infuriate and educate.
Henrietta Lacks tragically lost her life at the hands of an aggressive cervical cancer back in 1951, made even more tragic by the fact that she was the mother to five young children at the time. What no one in her family knew then, or for the next 20 years, is that doctors harvested some of her cancer cells while she was still alive (without her knowledge or consent,) and these cells have been crucial to breakthroughs in medical science ever since - in curing polio, studying how cancer grows, learning how viruses spread, just to name a few applications - Henrietta's cells even went into space.
While Henrietta's cells continued to multiply, her family floundered. Struggling to get by, often ironically lacking basic medical coverage, her family continues to have trust issues with medical facilities and personnel. While Henrietta's cells have generated billions of dollars for some, none of this has gone to her family. Not only is this book an amazing story of human life and incredible science, it also addresses the ethical and moral issues surrounding our bodies and ownership of such.
Author Rebecca Skloot, who spent ten years writing this book and gaining the Lacks' family's trust, does an amazing job of combining the scientific with the personal. This is narrative non-fiction at its best.
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