daniel1ae1

Rereading; hoping for an interview with the author. Henrietta Lacks was a poor black woman from Clover, Virginia, and Baltimore who died of cervical cancer at Johns Hopkins Hospital in 1951. Shortly before she died, doctors removed cells from her cervix without her knowledge. In laboratory conditions, the cells began reproducing, which had happened before. But the cell line didn't quickly die out; instead it prospered. Soon there were millions of the cells, labeled HeLa, and then billions. That had never happened before. Hence the "immortal life" in the title. HeLa cells have been used in everything from creating polio vaccine to researching cures for AIDS. They've gone to outer space. They've been used in nuclear experiments. Vials of HeLa cells exist in virtually every medical research lab. But for decades, none of those researchers knew who Henrietta Lacks was, and her children and grandchildren had no notion of her cells' enormous contribution to medical science. Rebecca Skloot wasn't the first journalist to tell this story, but she did it in by far the most detail, and the fruits of her painstaking efforts are evident in this remarkable book. She tells two stories, really. The medical science story about HeLa cells is fascinating in itself. But the far more compelling story is about Henrietta's family, particularly her daughter Deborah. A couple of excerpts: Christoph reached into the freezer behind him, grabbed another vial of HeLa cells, and held it out to Deborah, his eyes soft. She stood stunned for a moment, staring into his outstretched hand, then grabbed the vial and began rubbing it fast between her palms, like she was warming herself in winter. "She's cold," Deborah said, cupping her hands and blowing onto the vial. Christoph motioned for us to follow him to the incubator where he warmed the cells, but Deborah didn't move. As Zakariyya and Christoph walked away, she raised the vial and touched it to her lips. "You're famous," she whispered. "Just nobody knows it." ... Sonny had a quintuple bypass in 2003, when he was fifty-six years old -- the last thing he remembered before falling unconscious under the anesthesia was a doctor standing over him saying his mother's cells were one of the most important things that had ever happened to medicine. Sonny woke up more than $125,000 in debt because he didn't have health insurance to cover the surgery.

2022-09-27 08:34