meanieheadbookreviews 's review for:

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

dark emotional informative reflective sad

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This is a nonfiction biography about a black woman in the 1950s whose cells are taken without her knowledge/consent (cervical cancer cells, to be precise) and used for various big-time scientific endeavors. She is the human behind HeLa cells. Evidently this is a big deal in the scientific community, of which I am not a member, but these are the first cells scientists were able to keep alive in perpetuity in a Petri dish. They have been used to develop critical advances in modern medicine (the polio vaccine, HIV/AIDS treatment, leukemia studies, etc). Don’t read this if you’re on medication for high blood pressure. Her cells have been harvested over and over, sold for millions (billions?) to pharmaceutical research companies, and her family has seen none of the profits from this. They weren’t even informed about it. Her daughter is heavily featured in this text, and Deborah Lacks has been haunting me for weeks after finishing this book. This book fosters valuable conversations about research ethics, race politics, and the broken American healthcare system. I’d recommend this one.