The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Henrietta Lacks was a young African American mother from Baltimore who died of an aggressive form of cervical cancer in 1951. Without her or her family's knowledge or consent, doctors took a sample of her tumor that became the first immortal human cell line.

HeLa cells, named after Henrietta Lacks, are unique because they do not die after a few divisions like normal cells; they can be kept alive indefinitely in a lab. They were crucial for developing the polio vaccine, cancer research, and thousands of other medical breakthroughs.

Published in 2010, Skloot uses the book to highlight the profound medical ethics violations of the 1950s and the lack of informed consent in tissue sampling. She focuses heavily on the emotional and financial toll this unauthorized harvesting took on the Lacks family, who could not even afford health insurance.

Skloot spent over a decade researching and writing the book, extensively interviewing Lacks's surviving children, most notably her daughter Deborah. Her meticulous journalism is credited with bringing the unrecognized contribution of Henrietta Lacks to mainstream public awareness.