The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot

http://rebeccaskloot.com/

I finished reading this book last week, it was the first book I have read in ages, and it was amazing.

"There’s a photo on my wall of a woman I’ve never met, its left corner torn and patched together with tape. She looks straight into the camera and smiles, hands on hips, dress suit neatly pressed, lips painted deep red. It’s the late 1940s and she hasn’t yet reached the age of thirty. Her light brown skin is smooth, her eyes still young and playful, oblivious to the tumor growing inside her—a tumor that would leave her five children motherless and change the future of medicine. Beneath the photo, a caption says her name is “Henrietta Lacks, Helen Lane or Helen Larson.”

No one knows who took that picture, but it’s appeared hundreds of times in magazines and science textbooks, on blogs and laboratory walls. She’s usually identified as Helen Lane, but often she has no name at all. She’s simply called HeLa, the code name given to the world’s first immortal human cells—her cells, cut from her cervix just months before she died.

Her real name is Henrietta Lacks."

-excerpt from opening chapter

Simply put, the book flits back and forth from two viewpoints: one of science and one of humanity.

The book is about the life of Henrietta Lacks and her family, the woman who's biopsied cancerous cells were the first cells to survive and replicate in cell media, and was used in numerous pioneering scientific experiements, responsible for important drug developments amongst other things. Underneath this very human aspect, the science behind cell culturing and what happened to these cells is weaved thougout, explained simply and succinctly.

Henrietta Lacks

Behind the wonderful discoveries that were occuring in science in the 1950s that are acknowledged in this book and the significant consequences of these, there is a great sadness in the book surrounding how the actions of the scientists, doctors and media affected Henrietta's family so many years after her cells were taken.

I was shocked about the scrupulous medical ethics surrounding medical experiments and patient consent that was happening not so long ago. The book raises important questions about appropriate communication between doctors and patients, as well as ethical issues surounding consent, the monetary value of medicine and science and ownership of patient cells.

The book is writen so sensitively and transparently, as the author takes the reader with her on her journey to find out the truth about Henrietta and her cells. It becomes very obvious how genuinely the author cares about Henrietta's story and what is to become of her family, allowing the reader to develop empathy with their situation.



This would be a brilliant informative book to read in medical school, not least because it explains all the science bits in such as easy understanddable way, but is also an important lesson on how a doctors' actions and words can deeply affect not only one patient, but several generations related to that patient. I found this book very moving and inspiring, and has definately influenced and informed my future clinical practice.