One woman’s immortality claimed at death

“Worth a read?” is not your ordinary book review; it is a meta-review. In other words, it provides an overview of the opinions contained in a variety of book reviews published in the media at large. This week we look at The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, written by Rebecca Skloot and released in South Africa in April 2010. It tells the story of a poor woman’s legacy to humankind at large.

What is it all about?

In the early 1950s, a 31-year-old African-American woman was admitted to the coloured ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital. Henrietta Lacks’s aggressive cervical cancer led to her death not long after, but this poor, largely illiterate tobacco farmer would make one of the greatest contributions to medical science of the past century.

Medical professionals had long struggled to keep human tissue alive in culture, but they continued trying. Without Lacks’s permission, a dime-sized sample of her cancerous tissue was taken before she died. Instead of simply surviving, Lacks’s tissue sample grew and multiplied as no tissue had before.

To date, scientists have grown some 50 million metric tonnes of her cells – called HeLa cells, from the first two letters of her name and surname. Laid end to end, HeLa cells would wrap around the world three times. Her cells have been used in over 60 000 scientific studies, and have been key in experiments on vaccinations, cancer, viruses, the effect of the atomic bomb and many others.

Decades after her death, however, Lacks’s family remained largely unaware of her contribution to medical science, and of exactly what her tissue was used for. Still besieged by poverty, her family members struggle to access health insurance, while Henrietta’s tissue has become one of the most sought-after ‘ingredients’ of medical science.

In The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, author Rebecca Skloot tells Henrietta’s story, and the medical, racial, socio-economic and ethical issues that surround it.

Who is the author?

Rebecca Skloot is a science and creative nonfiction writer, and has written for publications as diverse as The New York Times and O, The Oprah Magazine. The topics she has covered include goldfish surgery, food politics and wild dogs in Manhattan. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is her first book, and she spent 10 years researching Lacks and gaining the trust of her family members.

What do others say?

Critics of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks are few and far between. Almost without exception, critics have claimed it is impossible to put down the book. Skloot’s thorough investigation of medical ethics is repeatedly placed within the very personal context of Henrietta Lacks and her family, meaning that, although complex medical issues are covered, this is done with warmth and personal insight.

Variously described as beautiful, moving, endearing, thrilling, heart-breaking, witty and lyrical, this book shines a light on the human element in a medical profession that was (and perhaps still is) desensitised from its patients.

The New York Times: "[The book] is also, from first page to last, a meditation on medical ethics – on the notion of informed consent, and on the issue of who owns human cells. When they’re in your body, it’s obvious – they’re yours. But once they’ve been removed? All bets are clearly off."

Scienceblogs.com: "[The book] is equal parts popular science, historical biography and detective novel. It reads as evocatively as any work of fiction, with dialogue, characters and settings vividly reconstructed from archived material, legal documents and thousands of hours of interviews. Like a mystery, the chronology flits back and forth from the first and last days of Henrietta’s life, the decades of discovery that followed her death, and Skloot’s own modern-day quest to uncover the story."

How do I get hold of it?

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is published in South Africa by Pan Macmillan. It is available at Exclusive Books at a price of approximately R162.00.