As a young mother suffering from cancer in a segregated US, Lacks unknowingly changed the course of medical history. But her identity and contribution to science remained a secret to most of the world.
In 1976, the American magazine Rolling Stone featured an article about Henrietta Lacks and her family. They were also the subject of a 1996 documentary by the BBC called The Way of All Flesh and articles in Ebony and Science80. But not until the publishing of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot, has the whole story been shared.
To explain the tremendous impact Lacks had, it is essential to go into the details of her medical history and of medical research. Though that sets up the possibility for a very dull narrative, Skloot deftly explains the material and focuses on the human element in such a way that readers will be sucked in.
In doing research for this story, Skloot painstakingly gains the trust of Lacks’ surviving children, especially her daughter Deborah. Through interviews with them, relatives, physicians and researchers, a story slowly builds.
In the 1950s Lacks was treated for a cancer that was later diagnosed as cervical cancer. Although treated in a segregated ward at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, Maryland, she received care that was considered to be the best available for African Americans. Despite this, Lacks died as a result of her cancer at the age of 31, leaving behind five children and her husband.
At that same at John Hopkins, George Gey was busily researching how to keep cells alive and growing. It wasn’t until Gey received a sample of Lacks’ cells that he found success. And a lot of it. Lacks’ cells, named HeLa after the first two initials in Lacks’ first and last names, grew at a great rate and didn’t stop. These cells were a huge scientific discovery that would change medical research and patient rights forever.
After a few false starts, Gey developed a way to send samples of HeLa around the world. Researchers were able to use them to create treatments for cancer and AIDS. They made it possible to do tests on the polio vaccine, effects of radiation and safety of various everyday products. Researchers also challenged the rights of patients, experimenting by injecting live patients will HeLa (cancer), which led to more stringent regulations being created.
The part of Lacks’ story that stuck in the mind of her sons was this: Although Johns Hopkins didn’t make any money off of HeLa, other people around the world did. Lots of money. And the Lacks family not only didn’t get a percentage of it, they didn’t even know that the cells had been taken. The family was poor with no health insurance and several members were battling illnesses. Medicine was profiting from their relative’s cells but they weren’t getting to enjoy the benefits of medicine.
The part that Lacks’ daughter Deborah couldn’t help but focus on: Via her cells, Lacks was having an enormous global effect and adding to scientific knowledge, but her own daughter didn’t have a single memory of Lacks.
Although Skloot gives voice to the sons, the focus of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, due to the influence of Deborah, is Henrietta.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Skloot’s first book, takes readers on a journey through history. Readers will be happy to have found this book and to learn of HeLa, which plays such an important role in medicine and research and continue to live on and thrive and to learn about the woman behind those cells.
