The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks Book Summary - The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks Book explained in key points

The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks summary

Name: The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks
Rating: 4.2 (88 reviews)
Author: Rebecca Skloot

Rebecca Skloot

How one woman's cells changed scientific thinking forever.

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What is The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks about?

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks tells the story of a poor tobacco farmer who died from cervical cancer, and her cell strand, HeLa, which scientists used to develop a cure for polio and other diseases. In a fascinating and revealing investigation, author Rebecca Skloot uncovers the history of Henrietta and her family, of the exploitation of black Americans by the medical industry, and of Henrietta’s immortal cells.

About the Author

Rebecca Skloot is an award-winning science writer whose articles have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Discover and others. She has also worked as a correspondent for NPR and PBS. In 2010, Skloot sold the film rights for The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks to Alan Ball and Oprah Winfrey.

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Henrietta Lacks was a poor black American woman who died of an extremely aggressive form of cancer.

On August 1, 1920, in Roanoke, Virginia, a small girl who would change medical science forever was born. Her name was Henrietta.

Like most of her family, young Henrietta helped out on their tobacco farm, harvesting the crop and hauling the leaves to South Boston to be sold.

When she wasn’t working, young Henrietta played with her cousin, David Lacks – nicknamed Day.

Henrietta married Day when she was 20 and the couple soon began having children. But these were difficult times for small farmers, and the family were struggling financially. So Henrietta and Day decided to move to Sparrows Point, near Baltimore.

A decade later, in early 1951, Henrietta walked into the designated coloreds-only examination room of Johns Hopkins gynecology center. She’d discovered a lump on her cervix.

After doctors took a sample and rushed it to the pathology lab for diagnosis, they sent Henrietta home. There, she quickly returned to her usual daily routine: looking after her children, cooking for her family and keeping the house in order.

For a while at least, life continued as normal.

Then her biopsy results arrived: Henrietta had epidermoid carcinoma of the cervix, stage I.

At the time, Johns Hopkins were using radium – a radioactive material – to treat cervical cancer. But while radium is extremely effective at killing cancer cells, this comes at a cost: it also destroys any other cells it comes into contact with. Indeed, radium is so powerful that, in high doses, it can even burn the patient’s skin.

Giving her official consent for any treatments or surgery the doctors deemed necessary, Henrietta was once again led to the Johns Hopkins ward for colored women.

There, Henrietta endured hours upon hours of excruciating radium exposure – the first of many treatments she’d receive over the course of the year.

Even though these treatments were intensive, to the extent that much of her body was visibly burned, they were ultimately ineffective.

Henrietta Lacks died on October 4, 1951.

Although Henrietta Lacks succumbed to her illness, her cells – named “HeLa” – survived and thrived.

In the early 1950s, scientists and doctors were searching for ways to keep human cells alive outside the body so that they could conduct experimental research that would contribute to curing such illnesses as cancer, polio, herpes and influenza.

However, they struggled to keep the cells alive. When extracted from the body and placed in a culture medium (a liquid which helps cells survive), most of the cells would quickly die.

To help combat diseases like polio and cancer, scientists created a factory for producing HeLa cells.

Soon after Henrietta’s death in 1951, preparations were underway for the creation of a “HeLa factory,” a project to mass-produce HeLa cells on a weekly basis. The project had one overarching goal: to find a cure for polio.

But why were the HeLa cells so amenable to mass production? There were several reasons.

Although her cells spread across the globe, Henrietta and her family were largely forgotten.

The HeLa cells spread around the world, from lab to lab, at a fantastic rate. Yet as the cells’ fame and importance grew, their source was quickly forgotten.

In 1999, the author stumbled across a number of articles that were presented at a conference on the HeLa cells at Morehouse Medical School in Atlanta – one of the oldest historically black universities in the United States.

After Henrietta’s death, her family struggled to survive.

Following the death of Henrietta, her family struggled financially. To make ends meet, Henrietta’s widower, Day, began working two jobs. Meanwhile, her oldest son, Lawrence, left school to look after his two brothers, Sonny and Joe, and his sister, Deborah.

In the midst of these difficult times, there was also the burning question among the children of what had happened to their mother. Even though they were keen to know the answer, the children didn’t press their father; he’d already told them explicitly not to ask any questions that might rock the boat, and to accept that their mother had simply gone away.

Black Americans have a long history of being wary of the medical profession.

The author’s uphill battle in researching Henrietta’s life was in large part due to the family’s deep-seated lack of faith in her – a white reporter – to tell the story. Also, as mentioned previously, their hesitancy had its roots in a major distrust of and apprehension toward the medical field, because of its history with black Americans.

However, even though there are documented cases of the exploitation of black people by scientists, many of the stories circulating among black Americans were fictional. Since the 1800s, one of the tales shared via black oral history was a particularly sinister one: the case of the “night doctors” that kidnap black people to experiment on them.

Although HeLa cells helped many scientific discoveries, their prevalence threatened much research.

After distributing HeLa cells to research centers and hospitals all over the world, scientists continued research on HeLa and other cell cultures in the hope that cures for various diseases would shortly follow.

But in 1966, a major problem with the research was revealed.

The search to learn more about HeLa brought scientists to the Lacks family.

The widespread contamination of HeLa cells led doctors to try to locate Henrietta’s surviving family. Luckily, the family were patients at Johns Hopkins, so there was little difficulty in obtaining their contact information.

The doctors hoped that by taking samples from the family, they would be able to continue research on the contamination, and develop a way to map the human genome.

The HeLa case is not the only one that involved concerns about privacy in cell donation.

The case of Henrietta and the HeLa cells is certainly exceptional, since Henrietta was unfortunate enough to have a very aggressive form of cancer that nonetheless aided research and development to cure other diseases.

But it’s also unexceptional, in that what happened to Henrietta could have happened to others – and in fact did, in at least two similar cases.

To whom do my cells belong: The right to cells vs. the right to medical research.

At this point, you might reasonably wonder whether the actions of doctors in cases such as Henrietta’s – that is, isolating and marketing a patient’s cells without their consent – were illegal or not.

In fact, from Henrietta’s day to the time the author was writing (2009), such practices were not illegal.

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Who should read The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks

Anyone interested in the history of medicine
Anyone interested in the history of the relationship between black Americans and the US medical industry

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The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks summary

Listen to the first key idea

What is The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks about?

About the Author

Henrietta Lacks was a poor black American woman who died of an extremely aggressive form of cancer.

Although Henrietta Lacks succumbed to her illness, her cells – named “HeLa” – survived and thrived.

To help combat diseases like polio and cancer, scientists created a factory for producing HeLa cells.

Although her cells spread across the globe, Henrietta and her family were largely forgotten.

After Henrietta’s death, her family struggled to survive.

Black Americans have a long history of being wary of the medical profession.

Although HeLa cells helped many scientific discoveries, their prevalence threatened much research.

The search to learn more about HeLa brought scientists to the Lacks family.

The HeLa case is not the only one that involved concerns about privacy in cell donation.

To whom do my cells belong: The right to cells vs. the right to medical research.

Key ideas in The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks

Henrietta Lacks was a poor black American woman who died of an extremely aggressive form of cancer.

Although Henrietta Lacks succumbed to her illness, her cells – named “HeLa” – survived and thrived.

To help combat diseases like polio and cancer, scientists created a factory for producing HeLa cells.

Although her cells spread across the globe, Henrietta and her family were largely forgotten.

After Henrietta’s death, her family struggled to survive.

Black Americans have a long history of being wary of the medical profession.

Although HeLa cells helped many scientific discoveries, their prevalence threatened much research.

The search to learn more about HeLa brought scientists to the Lacks family.

The HeLa case is not the only one that involved concerns about privacy in cell donation.

To whom do my cells belong: The right to cells vs. the right to medical research.

Who should read The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks

Categories with The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks

Books like The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks

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