The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks

Outline

The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks (2010) tells the true story of a young mother whose cancer cells were taken without her knowledge in 1951. Her cells, known as HeLa, became the first human cells to keep growing in a laboratory and helped develop the polio vaccine and countless medical advances. Rebecca Skloot also follows the Lacks family and raises important questions about medical ethics, consent, and fairness.

• Henrietta Lacks was a young mother whose cancer cells were taken without her knowledge in 1951.
• Her cells, called HeLa, were the first human cells to keep growing in a laboratory.
• HeLa cells helped develop the polio vaccine and contributed to countless other medical advances.
• Rebecca Skloot follows the Lacks family to show the human story behind the science.
• The book raises hard questions about medical ethics, consent, and fairness in research.

Rebecca Skloot is an American science writer whose work has appeared in leading magazines and newspapers. She spent more than a decade researching the story of Henrietta Lacks, and the resulting book became a long-running bestseller and was adapted into a television film. She also founded the Henrietta Lacks Foundation, which supports people who contributed to science without their consent, and their families.