The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
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Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells--taken without her knowledge--became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first "immortal" human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. If you could pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, they'd weigh more than 50 million metric tons--as much as a hundred Empire State Buildings. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb's effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions. Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave.Now Rebecca Skloot takes us on an extraordinary journey, from the "colored" ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital in the...The New York Times - Dwight Garner…one of the most graceful and moving nonfiction books I've read in a very long time. A thorny and provocative book about cancer, racism, scientific ethics and crippling poverty, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks also floods over you like a narrative dam break, as if someone had managed to distill and purify the more addictive qualities of "Erin Brockovich," Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and The Andromeda Strain. More than 10 years in the making, it feels like the book Ms. Skloot was born to write. It signals the arrival of a raw but quite real talent…[The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks] has brains and pacing and nerve and heart, and it is uncommonly endearing.
Prologue: The Woman in the Photograph 1Deborah's Voice 9Pt. 1 Life1 The Exam ... 1951 132 Clover ... 1920-1942 183 Diagnosis and Treatment ... 1951 274 The Birth of HeLa ... 1951 345 "Blackness Be Spreadin All Inside" ... 1951 426 "Lady's on the Phone" ... 1999 497 The Death and Life of Cell Culture ... 1951 568 "A Miserable Specimen" ... 1951 639 Turner Station ... 1999 6710 The Other Side of the Tracks ... 1999 7711 "The Devil of Pain Itself" ... 1951 83Pt. 2 Death12 The Storm ... 1951 8913 The HeLa Factory ... 1951-1953 9314 Helen Lane ... 1953-1954 10515 "Too Young to Remember" ... 1951-1965 11016 "Spending Eternity in the Same Place" ... 1999 11817 Illegal, Immoral, and Deplorable ... 1954-1966 12718 "Strangest Hybrid" ... 1960-1966 13719 "The Most Critical Time on This Earth Is Now" ... 1966-1973 14420 The HeLa Bomb 1966 15221 Night Doctors 2000 15822 "The Fame She So Richly Deserves" ... 1970-1973 170Pt. 3 Immortality23 "It's Alive" ... 1973-1974 17924 "Least They Can Do" ... 1975 19125 "Who Told You You Could Sell My Spleen?" ... 1976-1988 19926 Breach of Privacy ... 1980-1985 20727 The Secret of Immortality ... 1984-1995 21228 After London ... 1996-1999 21829 A Village of Henriettas ... 2000 23230 Zakariyya ... 2000 24131 Hela, Goddess of Death ... 2000-2001 25032 "All That's My Mother" ... 2001 25933 The Hospital for the Negro Insane ... 2001 26834 The Medical Records ... 2001 27935 Soul Cleansing ... 2001 28636 Heavenly Bodies ... 2001 29437 "Nothing to Be Scared About" ... 2001 29738 The Long Road to Clover ... 2009 305Where They Are Now311Afterword 315Acknowledgments 329Notes 338Index 359
