The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Year: 2010
ISBN: 9780230748699
This book won the 2010 Wellcome Trust Book Prize, selected by a jury of the “Great and the Good” (Clive Anderson, writer Maggie Gee, the notorious A.C. Grayling, medical historian Michael Neve, and TV presenter Alice Roberts). More than that, it has been a great commercial success, selling millions of copies, and is currently being made into a film. So it must be good, right? Well, that depends what you’re looking for. Rebecca Skloot recounts the story of Henrietta Lacks and the immortal cell line, HeLa, that came originally from her cervical cancer cells in 1951. Specifically, the book deals with the dealing with ethical issues of race and class in medical research. The story is driven along by Skloot’s easy writing style, and larded with verbatim encounters with members of the Lacks family. It’s interesting, and it’s worth reading.