In 1951, a poor Southern tobacco farmer named Henrietta Lacks was diagnosed with terminal cervical cancer. She was treated at Johns Hopkins University, where a doctor took a sample of cells from her cervix without telling her and soon discovered that the cells not only could be kept alive, but also would grow indefinitely — a trait that revolutionized modern medicine and biological research.
This amazing true story is told in the New York Times bestseller “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” by Rebecca Skloot, an award-winning science writer. Her debut book raises important and troubling questions about biomedical research, including who owns the stuff of which we are made, while offering insights into conditions facing African Americans in the Jim Crow South and the lingering issues of prejudice and poverty that remain today.
“The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” is a page-turner that can be read on several levels — as biomedical whodunit, as compelling family drama and as unsettling history.
HeLa cells, a name coined from the first two letters of Henrietta Lacks’ first and last name, are still alive today, 60 years after Lacks died from cancer and was buried in an unmarked grave. As the first “immortal” cell line, Lacks’ cells contributed to the development of the polio vaccine, advances in chemotherapy, gene mapping and in vitro fertilization. HeLa cells were the first to be cloned and went up in the first space missions to see what would happen to human cells in zero gravity. While Lacks stood only 5 feet tall in her prime, the cells grown after her death would stretch around the world three times and would weigh an astonishing 50 million metric tons.
HeLa cells have been sold by the billions. Yet Lacks’ family didn’t even know the cells existed until 20 years ago when researchers contacted them for follow-up studies. The cells have spawned a multi-billion dollar biomedical industry, yet Lacks’ surviving family members received no compensation and many can’t afford health insurance.
Skloot tells this complex story through an artful interplay between the racial viewpoints of American society over the last 60 years, the crippling poverty that defined the lives of Lacks and her family, and the science and economics behind one of the most important medical discoveries of the last 100 years.
It took her a decade to write the book, much of which was spent gaining the trust of the Lacks family, who was initially wary of the young, well-educated woman from a very different culture and background than their own.
While the book is ostensibly about Henrietta Lacks, it also is about Rebecca Skloot and how her perseverance and passion led her to uncover an important chapter of history that until now has remained largely unknown.
DAVID “SONNY” LACKS TO VISIT BOISE STATE
“The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” is Boise State’s 2011-2012 Campus Read.
Incoming first-year students received the book this summer, and it is being discussed in all university 100-level courses this fall. In addition, Lacks’s son, David “Sonny” Lacks, will speak at 7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 3, in the Student Union Simplot Ballroom. The lecture, presented by the Campus Read committee, is free and open to the public.
Lacks will speak about his mother and her important contribution to modern medicine and will share what it meant to find out that his mother’s cells were being used in laboratories around the world.
Bob Kustra is president of Boise State University and host of Reader’s Corner, a weekly radio show on Boise State Public Radio. Reader’s Corner airs Fridays at 5:30 p.m. and repeats Sundays at 11 a.m. on KBSX 91.5 FM. Previous shows, including an interview with Skloot, are online and available for podcast at http://boisestatepublicradio.org/readerscorner.
