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The Barnes & Noble Review - Jerry Coyne

Henrietta Lacks lives a shadowy life as a footnote in biology textbooks. I first encountered her when taking a college course in cell biology: the cells used in a particular experiment, we learned, were "HeLa cells," which, though human, can grow independently outside the body in specially created laboratory conditions. They were named for the woman, Helen Lane, from whom they were originally derived. And that was all; having explained this, my professor returned to discussing the experiment and its significance. Like a drowned corpse bobbing up from the dark depths of footnote-dom, Helen Lane had surfaced briefly, only to descend again into obscurity. I didn't give her a second thought.

In contrast, science writer Rebecca Skloot also had a Helen Lane footnote moment in high school, but saw in that footnote the nucleus of a story about science and society. After ten years of HeLa sleuthing, Skloot's hunch has paid off handsomely: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a modern classic of science writing.

Let me qualify that. This isn't science writing in the sense of Stephen Jay Gould or Richard Dawkins: Skloot doesn't spend a lot of time describing or extolling scientific discoveries. For her, the science is a bit player -- though an important one -- in a complex and fascinating drama about how medical research intersected the lives of a poor black family in America. Her mixture of science and biography is sui generis, and its themes profound: racism, ethics, and scientific illiteracy.

The first thing Skloot learned was that "Helen Lane" was not the woman's real name, but a journalist's pseudonym for Henrietta Lacks. Born in1920 to a poor tobacco-farming family from southern Virginia, Lacks married and, following her husband's job, moved to Maryland. At age 31, she presented herself at Johns Hopkins Hospital, complaining of abdominal pain and vaginal bleeding. Doctors found an evil-looking purple growth on her cervix, which turned out to be malignant. She was given the latest treatment -- a packet of radium sewn inside her vagina -- but it didn't work. Eight months later Lacks died in agony, leaving five young children.

But for a quirk of fate, Lacks would be just another working person who lived and died in obscurity. A slice of her biopsy fell into the hands of George Gey, a researcher at Hopkins who, with the help of his wife Mary, had spent fruitless years trying to keep human cells alive in the laboratory. (This "tissue culture" is crucial for medical research since it obviates the need to experiment on living patients.) For some reason Helen's cells, which Gey dubbed "HeLa," not only lived, but divided rapaciously, becoming the first human cells that could be cultured indefinitely in the lab. We now know why: Lacks's cells have elevated amounts of an enzyme that keeps them from ageing.

Convinced that HeLa cells were the key to curing cancer, Gey handed them out gratis to dozens of researchers. And they became a scientific gold mine, used to develop the first polio vaccines, test chemotherapy drugs like Taxol, find treatments for AIDS, work out techniques for in vitro fertilization, and map genes onto human chromosomes. Even now, after nearly sixty years, 14 scientific papers on HeLa cells are published every day. Clearly, Henrietta Lacks achieved both physical and scientific immortality.

But her family was unaware of her distinction, and although biotechnology companies made millions of dollars peddling HeLa cells, her children never saw a dime. In fact, they didn't even know about the famous cells until years after Henrietta's death, finding out only when her daughter-in-law, who learned about them by accident, called the family with a chilling message: "Part of your mother, it's alive!" The commercial exploitation of Lacks's cells made her kin feel exploited and resentful. It took Skloot a year to get the family to return her phone calls, several more before they opened up completely. Eventually Skloot became friend and confidante to Henrietta's daughter Deborah, who was only an infant when her mother died. Deborah's search for the mother she never knew, and for the significance of her still-growing cells, is the pivot on which Skloot's story turns.

As Skloot led her through the maze of science, Deborah became deeply ambivalent. On one hand she was proud of her mother's contributions to medicine, on the other she became paranoid and erratic, worried that she would catch her mother's cancer or be pursued by the same doctors who, she believed, killed Henrietta. The tumultuous friendship between author and subject makes for some amazing vignettes: Deborah seeing her mother's cells for the first time under a microscope ("Oh God," she gasped. "I can't believe all that's my mother"); Deborah worrying that the experimental fusion of HeLa cells with plant cells would produce a "human monster that was half her mother, half tobacco"; Deborah being exorcised of the demon cells by her evangelical cousin Gary as Skloot looks on ("LORD, I KNOW you sent Miss Rebecca to help LIFT THE BURDEN of them CELLS!").

The family finally makes peace with HeLa, deciding that "God chose Henrietta as an angel who would be reborn as immortal cells." Despite this, Skloot's tale doesn't end happily. But I defy you to read it without being moved. Or without thinking, for beneath the book runs a subliminal conversation about medical ethics. Apart from the selfless George Gey, Skloot's scientists and doctors behaved less than honorably. Henrietta Lacks's cells were cultured, disseminated, and sold without her or the family's knowledge or consent. Doctors with more curiosity than morality injected the cells into unsuspecting patients to see if they could cause cancer. The aggressive growth of HeLa cells caused them to contaminate other human cell cultures throughout the world, but scientists refused to admit the problem lest they lose reputation and funding. And, to track down this contamination, scientists at Johns Hopkins requested blood samples from Deborah and her siblings, but misled them by saying they were being "tested for cancer." Skloot avoids moralizing, but the injustice done to the Lacks family is palpable. One of many reasons to buy this wonderful book is to redress that injury: part of the profits go to a scholarship fund for Henrietta Lacks's descendants.

Skloot's afterword describes the current state of medical ethics. Sadly, progress has been slow. Yes, patients' names and records are now private, and scientists can't experiment on living subjects without informed consent, but doctors can still remove, profit from, and even patent a patient's tissues and DNA without her permission. This has become increasingly worrisome in the modern age of genomics. Since anyone's DNA might harbor a gene that is medically or commercially useful, all of us are fertile ground for genetic prospecting. That's not inherently bad, but researchers should remember the first dictum of medical ethics: patients are fellow human beings, not just collections of genes and tissues. Skloot describes how that insight struck George Gey's assistant when she saw Henrietta Lacks, nails carefully tended, laid out on the autopsy table:

"When I saw those toenails," Mary told me years later, "I nearly fainted. I thought, Oh geez, she's a real person. I started imagining her sitting in her bathroom painting those toenails, and it hit me for the first time that those cells we'd been working with all this time and sending all over the world, they came from a live woman. I'd never thought of it that way."

--Jerry Coyne

From Barnes & Noble

Who, you might ask, is Henrietta Lacks (1920-1951) and why is she the subject of a book? On the surface, this short-lived African American Virginian seems an unlikely candidate for immortality. The most remarkable thing about her, some might argue, is that she had ten children during her thirty-one years on earth. Actually, we all owe Ms. Lacks a great debt and some of us owe her our lives. As Rebecca Skloot tells us in this riveting human story, Henrietta was the involuntary donor of cells from her cancerous tumors that have been cultured to create an immortal cell line for medical research. These so-called HeLa cells have not only generated billions of dollars for the medical industry; they have helped uncover secrets of cancers, viruses, fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping. A vivid, exciting story; a 2010 Discover Great New Books finalist; a surprise bestseller in hardcover. Now in paperback and NOOKbook.

The Washington Post - Eric Roston

Skloot's vivid account…reads like a novel. The prose is unadorned, crisp and transparent…This book, labeled "science--cultural studies," should be treated as a work of American history. It's a deftly crafted investigation of a social wrong committed by the medical establishment, as well as the scientific and medical miracles to which it led. Skloot's compassionate account can be the first step toward recognition, justice and healing.

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.

Publishers Weekly

Science journalist Skloot makes a remarkable debut with this multilayered story about “faith, science, journalism, and grace.” It is also a tale of medical wonders and medical arrogance, racism, poverty and the bond that grows, sometimes painfully, between two very different women—Skloot and Deborah Lacks—sharing an obsession to learn about Deborah’s mother, Henrietta, and her magical, immortal cells. Henrietta Lacks was a 31-year-old black mother of five in Baltimore when she died of cervical cancer in 1951. Without her knowledge, doctors treating her at Johns Hopkins took tissue samples from her cervix for research. They spawned the first viable, indeed miraculously productive, cell line—known as HeLa. These cells have aided in medical discoveries from the polio vaccine to AIDS treatments. What Skloot so poignantly portrays is the devastating impact Henrietta’s death and the eventual importance of her cells had on her husband and children. Skloot’s portraits of Deborah, her father and brothers are so vibrant and immediate they recall Adrian Nicole LeBlanc’s Random Family. Writing in plain, clear prose, Skloot avoids melodrama and makes no judgments. Letting people and events speak for themselves, Skloot tells a rich, resonant tale of modern science, the wonders it can perform and how easily it can exploit society’s most vulnerable people. (Feb.)

Booklist

Writing with a novelist's artistry, a biologist's expertise, and the zeal of an investigative reporter, Skloot tells a truly astonishing story of racism and poverty, science and conscience, spirituality and family driven by a galvanizing inquiry into the sanctity of the body and the very nature of the life force. Starred review.

Library Journal

This distinctive work skillfully puts a human face on the bioethical questions surrounding the HeLa cell line. Henrietta Lacks, an African American mother of five, was undergoing treatment for cancer at Johns Hopkins University in 1951 when tissue samples were removed without her knowledge or permission and used to create HeLa, the first "immortal" cell line. HeLa has been sold around the world and used in countless medical research applications, including the development of the polio vaccine. Science writer Skloot, who worked on this book for ten years, entwines Lacks's biography, the development of the HeLa cell line, and her own story of building a relationship with Lacks's children. Full of dialog and vivid detail, this reads like a novel, but the science behind the story is also deftly handled. VERDICT While there are other titles on this controversy (e.g., Michael Gold's A Conspiracy of Cells: One Woman's Immortal Legacy—and the Medical Scandal It Caused), this is the most compelling account for general readers, especially those interested in questions of medical research ethics. Highly recommended. [See Skloot's essay, p. 126; Prepub Alert, LJ 11/1/09.]—Carla Lee, Univ. of Virginia Lib., Charlottesville

The New York Times Book Review - Lisa Margonelli

…Rebecca Skloot introduces us to the "real live woman," the children who survived her, and the interplay of race, poverty, science and one of the most important medical discoveries of the last 100 years. Skloot narrates the science lucidly, tracks the racial politics of medicine thoughtfully and tells the Lacks family's often painful history with grace. She also confronts the spookiness of the cells themselves, intrepidly crossing into the spiritual plane on which the family has come to understand their mother's continued presence in the world. Science writing is often just about "the facts." Skloot's book, her first, is far deeper, braver and more wonderful.

Kirkus Reviews

A dense, absorbing investigation into the medical community's exploitation of a dying woman and her family's struggle to salvage truth and dignity decades later. In a well-paced, vibrant narrative, Popular Science contributor and Culture Dish blogger Skloot (Creative Writing/Univ. of Memphis) demonstrates that for every human cell put under a microscope, a complex life story is inexorably attached, to which doctors, researchers and laboratories have often been woefully insensitive and unaccountable. In 1951, Henrietta Lacks, an African-American mother of five, was diagnosed with what proved to be a fatal form of cervical cancer. At Johns Hopkins, the doctors harvested cells from her cervix without her permission and distributed them to labs around the globe, where they were multiplied and used for a diverse array of treatments. Known as HeLa cells, they became one of the world's most ubiquitous sources for medical research of everything from hormones, steroids and vitamins to gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, even the polio vaccine-all without the knowledge, must less consent, of the Lacks family. Skloot spent a decade interviewing every relative of Lacks she could find, excavating difficult memories and long-simmering outrage that had lay dormant since their loved one's sorrowful demise. Equal parts intimate biography and brutal clinical reportage, Skloot's graceful narrative adeptly navigates the wrenching Lack family recollections and the sobering, overarching realities of poverty and pre-civil-rights racism. The author's style is matched by a methodical scientific rigor and manifest expertise in the field. Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance betweensociological history, venerable portraiture and Petri dish politics. Tie-in with multicity author lecture schedule. Agent: Simon Lipskar/Writers House

What People Are Saying

"Skloot's book is wonderful -- deeply felt, gracefully written, sharply reported. It is a story about science but, much more, about life."--(Susan Orlean, author of The Orchid Thief)

What People Are Saying

"The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks brings to mind the work of Philip K. Dick and Edgar Allan Poe. But this tale is true. Rebecca Skloot explores the racism and greed, the idealism and faith in science that helped to save thousands of lives but nearly destroyed a family. This is an extraordinary book, haunting and beautifully told."--(Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation)

What People Are Saying

"No one can say exactly where Henrietta Lacks is buried: during the many years Rebecca Skloot spent working on this book, even Lacks's hometown of Clover, Virginia, disappeared. But that did not stop Skloot in her quest to exhume, and resurrect, the story of her heroine and her family. What this important, invigorating book lays bare is how easily science can do wrong, especially to the poor. The issues evoked here are giant: who owns our bodies, the use and misuse of medical authority, the unhealed wounds of slavery ... and Skloot, with clarity and compassion, helps us take the long view. This is exactly the sort of story that books were made to tell-thorough, detailed, quietly passionate, and full of revelation."--(Ted Conover, author of Newjack and The Routes of Man)

What People Are Saying

"It's extremely rare when a reporter's passion finds its match in a story. Rarer still when the people in that story courageously join that reporter in the search for what we most need to know about ourselves. When this occurs with a moral journalist who is also a true writer, a human being with a heart capable of holding all of life's damage and joy, the stars have aligned. This is an extraordinary gift of a book, beautiful and devastating-a work of outstanding literary reportage. Read it! It's the best you will find in many many years."--(Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, author of Random Family)

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