Rebecca Skloot is an award-winning science writer, and a contributing editor at 
Calling all academics: If you'd like a free advanced copy of my book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, to consider it for course adoption, get thee to Random House's academic blog and request a copy quick, while supplies last (which probably won't be long at the rate things are going). See below for more information on the book, and advanced praise. It's a story with wide potential for course adoption in the sciences, bioethics, African-American studies, womens studies, creative writing, journalism, and much more. Added bonus: If you teach the book this spring, you can also get me to come speak at your school/in your classes as part of my book tour.Here's Publishers Weekly on The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks:
Science journalist Skloot makes a remarkable debut with this multilayered story about "faith, science, journalism, and grace." It is also a tale of medical wonders and medical arrogance, racism, poverty and the bond that grows, sometimes painfully, between two very different women--Skloot and Deborah Lacks--sharing an obsession to learn about Deborah's mother, Henrietta, and her magical, immortal cells. Henrietta Lacks was a 31-year-old black mother of five in Baltimore when she died of cervical cancer in 1951. Without her knowledge, doctors treating her at Johns Hopkins took tissue samples from her cervix for research. They spawned the first viable, indeed miraculously productive, cell line--known as HeLa. These cells have aided in medical discoveries from the polio vaccine to AIDS treatments. What Skloot so poignantly portrays is the devastating impact Henrietta's death and the eventual importance of her cells had on her husband and children. Skloot's portraits of Deborah, her father and brothers are so vibrant and immediate they recall Adrian Nicole LeBlanc's Random Family. Writing in plain, clear prose, Skloot avoids melodrama and makes no judgments. Letting people and events speak for themselves, Skloot tells a rich, resonant tale of modern science, the wonders it can perform and how easily it can exploit society's most vulnerable people.
- Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
Education
Medicine & Health
Comments
Rebecca, will you be doing a book signing at a Memphis bookstore?
Posted by: BGT | November 6, 2009 8:02 AM
Yeah, I use HeLa's. But I think those Chinese hamsters deserve a biography, too. They do a lot of the heavy lifting. :-)
Posted by: Mariel | December 13, 2009 6:15 PM
The development of Hela cells is not a tale of how modern science can "exploit society’s most vulnerable people." Ms. Lacks died of her advanced cervical cancer, so I'm not sure how culturing her biopsy was exploitation. The law says that a person's discarded tissue and cells are not their property. So, if there was a consent form there would be no issue here, right?
Ms. Lacks did not donate her tissues, so why she should be honored for something she had no cognizant involvement in initiating or developing. It was pure bad luck that her cells would grow well in vitro. She deserves as much or little recognition as the many thousands who have donated biopsies, tissues, organs or bodies either knowingly, or unknowingly to the advancement of science.
Posted by: P | December 15, 2009 4:43 PM
I think that commenter P (#3) may underestimate the exploitation of Ms. Lacks and the Lacks family as well as the true contribution of Ms. Lacks's biopsied tissue. As I've said elsewhere, even I thought I knew the whole HeLa story until I read a pre-print of this book.
One has to truly grasp the medical attitudes toward African Americans in the 1950s, a history of mistreatment and exploitation that extends back to slave ships. That Ms. Lacks was put in a position to have bits of her cancer excised for cell culture attempts may not seem offensive by today's standards where we each are likely to have tissue samples in repositories somewhere. But one must follow this event and the subsequent actions of the medical establishment to secure further tissue samples and information from Lacks family members without any consideration, compassion, or simple common decency. I would encourage P to read the book when it comes out and then reconsider if the Lacks family was not exploited.
As for the cells themselves, yes, yes, Ms. Lacks did not give up her tumor tissue because she intended for the cells to be propagated and studied worldwide - her tissue was taken to the lab unknowingly and without consent. But cultivation of the first immortalized human cell line opened the door to understanding how this could be done for more intractable cells in culture. Go back and read some of the 1950s papers by Ted Puck, Richard Ham, and Harry Eagle on the requirements for mammalian cell growth in vitro. Many of these papers using HeLa cells appeared in Science, Nature, and J Exp Med - certainly not inconsequential journals.
But let's step back for a moment as humans who stand on the shoulders of our forebearers: how can you look back on the breadth of discoveries enabled by the availability of HeLa cells and not feel some debt of gratitude toward this woman? How can one not feel compelled to honor her suffering and that of her family? For me, that is reason enough for this story to be told with reverence and respect.
Posted by: Abel Pharmboy | December 23, 2009 3:07 PM