Drop Everything and Read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks Right Now!

Posted On March 4, 2022

Hi Readers! If you remember, I went on & on about this book I read last month in this post. The amazing book is The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. This is a book about science & ethics & ethics in science & the life & story of Henrietta Lacks. This is a nonfiction book lasting 370 pages, which is a combination of science, medicine, biography & history. Rebecca Skloot worked on it for 10 years after which it was finally published in 2010. It stayed on the Bestseller List for 6 long years. Because I decided to venture more into nonfiction, I came across this & I will eternally be grateful that I read it. It was mentioned somewhere in the book, “It would make a great story for Rolling Stone – the perfect mix of science and human interest.” I couldn’t agree more. Want to know why? Read below!

~~WHAT IS HELA?~~

I won’t add a Goodreads description with this article, because I would love to describe the book in brief myself. In science, whatever discoveries, medicines & research is being done since 1951, is because of HeLa cells. Before the scientists found HeLa, no other human cells could live by themselves in culture. And, then came this black woman Henrietta Lacks who was diagnosed with cervical cancer. Her cells, which named HeLa were the only ones to stay alive. And not only alive, they reproduced an entire generation of cells every twenty-four hours, and they never stopped. This event for the scientists was equivalent to an ordinary man winning a 100 million dollar lottery or an actress making 50 back to back hit films or for fans like you and me, their role model inviting us to live with them in their mansion assisting on their latest book or music or art! Now you get the level of importance of HeLa? By the way, it is pronounced as hee lah.

~~WHAT HELA HELPED ACHIEVE~~

HeLa cells have helped with some of the most important advances in medicine: the polio vaccine, chemotherapy, cloning, gene mapping, in vitro fertilization. They have helped develop drugs for treating herpes, leukemia, influenza, hemophilia, Parkinson’s disease & helped make blood pressure medicines & antidepression pills. They have been used to study lactose digestion, sexually transmitted diseases, appendicitis, human longevity, mosquito mating & the negative cellular effects of working in sewers. Her cells were part of research into the genes that cause cancer & those that suppress it. Scientists used HeLa to test the effects of steroids, chemotherapy drugs, hormones, vitamins & environmental stress. Her cells also went up in the first space missions to see what would happen to human cells in zero gravity.

Such is the immense contribution of HeLa cells to science & humankind! The fact that I had zero knowledge about this makes me feel so ignorant I cannot state. But, now that I know about it, I tell it to everyone & can’t shut up about it. So, yes, if reading through this amazed you, albeit bored you a little, I suggest you read the actual book which is all the more interesting, fascinating & not in the least boring.

“If you could lay all HeLa cells ever grown end-to-end, they’d wrap around the Earth at least three times, spanning more than 350 million feet.”

~~MORALS & ETHICS IN MEDICINE & RESEARCH~~

Did you know that no law or code of ethics requires doctors to ask permission before taking tissue from a living patient?

Did you know that prisoners nationwide (US) were being used for research of all kinds—from testing chemical warfare agents to determining how X-raying testicles affected sperm count?

Did you know that it was not illegal for doctors to tell you when they use your cells in research?

Did you know that patenting cell lines didn’t require informing or getting permission from the cell donors themselves?

Did you know that Henrietta’s family had no idea about HeLa cells until 25 years after her death? That even though her cells were integral to advancement of science, her own family was poor, had no health insurance or afford treatment for their many ailments?

I did not know of any of this. When I read about this in the book, it boiled my blood, so I can’t even imagine the hardship, unfairness, ignorance & less than humane treatment that Henrietta’s family suffered. Though there were no codes or ethics surrounding this, it was termed illegal. Despite this, HeLa cells were shared by George Gey & Johns Hopkins hospital widely so much so that anyone can today order HeLa cells for 250 dollars a vial. Everyone earned money because of HeLa except for Henrietta’s own family.

All this was prevalent even in 2010 when the book was published. I checked online to see if there were any changes in the law, but sadly it is still the same. The debate continues, and while it does there are so many cells being researched in labs across the world from cell donors whose consent was not asked.

~~THE FAMILY~~

I loved that this book was not all science. If it were, it would not have been such a hit. Because we are introduced to Henrietta’s family, we understood the reality of the whole story. The book went on going back & forth between family & science, which made for the perfect balance.

Henrietta Lacks was married to her cousin David Lacks (Day) & had five children; Laurence, Sonny, Elsie, Zakariyya & Deborah. In the book, we are introduced to all of them. They are as you would expect them to be. Angry at the world, lost & looking for answers & without a purpose. They had so many questions about their mother. She died when Lawrence was 15 years old, so apart from him no one really knew Henrietta. Deborah was the one who we get to know the most.

They have so many trust issues over strangers coming into their homes, asking for information & then leaving them adrift.

They couldn’t go to the hospital because doctors there took their blood & cells for research but told them it was to test them for cancer.

Almost all of them had hearing impairment. Deborah had more ailments than she could count. And yet, they couldn’t afford treatment or health insurance cover. They could not afford the medicines which were created with the help of their mother’s own cells!

They couldn’t separate the cells from Henrietta. Because they never really knew their mother, finding a part of her in the HeLa cells was a meaningful moment for them.

~~CONCLUSION~~

When someone close to you dies, it is such a life-changing event. You always carry that grief with you. And just when you get somewhat of a normal life semblance back, you understand that that person’s cells are used for research all around the world even after many years of their death. The whole trauma comes back making you feel helpless. Who to be angry at? Who all to hold responsible? Who to blame? What to do with all this anger?

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a novel with so many levels to it. Rebecca Skloot asks all the right questions, gives us the answers we didn’t know we needed & puts a light underneath the dusty old carpet to show us the real scenario. She has done an impeccable job with this book with her masterful writing, brilliantly done research & connecting with Henrietta’s family. She has shown us the side no one had shown before. She showed us the Henrietta Lacks behind HeLa, not the other way round. I have rated this book at 5/5 stars & I recommend everyone to read this book right away!

Until next time,