Business Times of Edmond, Oklahoma March 2020 - Page 29

BOOK REVIEW
BY CAMERON BRAKE | BEST OF BOOKS
The Immortal Life of
Henrietta Lacks
by Rebecca Skloot
Paperback: 381 pages
Publisher: Broadway Books (March 8, 2011)
In Review: “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks”
W
hen people who come to Best of
Books in search of their next read
ask me for recommendations, I am
always initially tempted to rattle off my all-time
favorites. I imagine this impulse is common for
not just book store employees, but all readers.
We want people to read and love what we read
and love. However, I learned early on that this is
rarely helpful. Rather than ramble on about my
most cherished books and all the reasons they
should be widely read, it is far more helpful to
begin with questions. And the most important
question is this: Which do you more prefer,
fiction or nonfiction? I can give solid fiction
recommendations from dusk till dawn, but my
confidence with regards to nonfiction is, shall
we say, shaky. This simply will not do. I have
decided that it is well past time to experience
the numerous joys of reguarly reading books
that are Capital-T True. It took only 15 pages
of Rebecca Skloot’s “The Immortal Life of
Henrietta Lacks” to make abundantly clear just
how much I’ve been missing out.
Henrietta Lacks was born in 1920 in
rural Virginia. Her great grandparents were
enslaved, and her parents were desperately poor
sharecroppers who worked the same tobacco
fields as their enslaved ancestors. Henrietta
would also work those fields as a child. This
is where her life begins. Her life ends in a
segregated cancer ward at Johns Hopkins in
1951. The medical treatments of the day were
no match for the vicious form of cervical cancer
that took Henrietta Lacks away from her family
at the age of 31. Henrietta Lacks was a wife and
mother. She was kind, stern, and beautiful.
Like all African-American women of her era,
she endured the horrors of virulent racism and
sexism every day of her life. As is the case for
nearly everyone, the life and death of Henrietta
Lacks were both immensely fascinating and
unquestionably ordinary. What sets her apart,
what makes her one of the most important
people to have ever lived is her cells. Henrietta
died in 1951. Her cells are still alive today. And
there are enough of them to wrap around the
earth three times. Her cells were the first in
human history to be cultured, the first cells to
become immortal.
Known by the name HeLa, her cells are
in every laboratory doing any sort of research
that requires human cells. They have been
in space. They were used in the first nuclear
bomb tests. Numerous medicines, vaccines,
and medical breakthroughs were brought to us
via work with HeLa cells. The creation of the
HeLa cell line was one of the most important
events in medical history. Apart from her tragic
and painful death, you would be forgiven for
thinking that this is a purely happy story. Alas,
it is not so easy. All of these breakthroughs,
all of this wonderful scientific progress is the
direct result of racist exploitation and unethical
medical practices. While Henrietta Lacks lay
dying in her racially segregated hospital bed, a
white doctor took samples of both healthy and
cancerous cells from her without explaining
anything to her or her family. Those samples,
taken without consent, would eventually provide
the financial bedrock for the entire medical-
cellular industry. Henrietta’s children, who are
still alive today, never received a cent. What’s
worse, they did not learn the full story of their
mother’s cells for 20 years. Skloot’s presentation
of the available records, testimonials and general
history, combined with countless interviews
she conducted paint a picture that is difficult
to weigh.
I have provided only an outline of the
essential facts. This is an enormous story,
and Skloot does a masterful job of presenting
difficult scientific material in a way that
anyone can easily understand. You need not
be an expert in cellular biology to stand in
awe of the work Henrietta’s cells enabled. All
of humanity has benefitted from that work.
Simultaneously, Skloot forces us to reckon with
the jarring reality that the children of one of
the most important figures in all of medical
science cannot access even the most basic
health insurance. Despite the billions of dollars
generated by Henrietta’s cells, her family lives in
abject poverty. “The Immortal Life of Henrietta
Lacks” is the sort of book you will want to talk
about with everyone you know.
REVIEWER CAMERON BRAKE works
at Best of Books, Edmond’s independently owned
bookstore at 1313 E. Danforth in the Kickingbird
Square Shopping Center. 
March 2020 | The Business Times
29