Context

On October 4, 1951, Henrietta Lacks, an African American mother of five from Virginia died of cervical cancer at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. While beloved and mourned by her family, no one could have predicted that Henrietta’s death would change the course of medical science. That’s exactly what happened, though, when scientists who had extracted cancerous cells from Henrietta’s cervix—without informing her or her family—found that her cells were capable of reproducing indefinitely in the lab. This first line of “immortal” human cells would be used in research ranging from the development of the polio vaccine to cancer detection and treatment, and learning how human cells responded to zero-gravity conditions.

While scientists have long been familiar with the extraordinary HeLa cells as they are known (from Henrietta Lacks), few knew anything about Henrietta, her family, and the effects that her cells had on their lives until Rebecca Skloot’s book was published in 2010, nearly sixty years after Henrietta’s death.

After more than a decade of research—and making her way past a great deal of initial resistance from Henrietta’s widower and children—Skloot reveals for the first time the deeply personal story of the woman whose cells became one of the most important tools in medicine, and the family that was ignored and forgotten by the scientists who harvested her cells without her knowledge or permission.

Though there is no evidence that the doctor who originally harvested the cells or Johns Hopkins ever received direct profit from the sale of HeLa cells, many biotech companies have; and none of the profits were shared with the Lacks family.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a pivotal exploration of the complicated relationship between race, science, and medical ethics.