Tuesday, March 27, 2012

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

I recently came upon a book at the library by Rebecca Skloot titled "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" that seemed to be a fascinating read.


I checked the book out and I found the story - nonfiction to be amazing.  If you are a science/medicine person, you will probably recognize the HeLa cell line, but if you are a novice, the story covers the life of a black woman named Henrietta Lacks who died of cervical cancer in the 1950s at Johns Hopkins.


It seems that Lacks' cancer cells which were taken without her permission have been used to advance medicine in miraculous ways but her family were never consulted nor reimbursed for all the profits that HeLa cells amassed.


If you have an interest in the human interest story about this amazing woman's cells and how she single handedly advance the science of medicine - I highly recommend this read.

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