The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

"Doctors took her cells without asking.  Those cells never died.  They launched a medical revolution and a multimillion-dollar industry.  More than twenty years later, her children found out.  Their lives would never be the same." - Skloot, [cover].


Skloot, a science writer whose work has graced many magazines and journals, weaves an emotional tale of Henrietta Lacks, a poverty-stricken American woman of colour diagnosed with cervix cancer, during the 1950s and onward in her work The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.  Doctors harvested cells from Lacks' cervix following her diagnoses of cancer.  However, her cells continued to reproduce in the hospital's petri dishes and came to be one of the most important tools in developing vaccines, gene mapping, and the ability to clone animals.  She and her family never received recognition or funds despite the wealth of information and money Lacks' cells have brought to the field of medicine throughout the twentieth century.