2025/037: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks — Rebecca Skloot

2025/037: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks — Rebecca Skloot

Black scientists and technicians, many of them women, used cells from a black woman to help save the lives of millions of Americans, most of them white. And they did so on the same campus – and at the very same time – that state officials were conducting the infamous Tuskegee syphilis studies. [p. 97]

I've owned this book for a decade, and I wish I had read it sooner. It's the story of a Black woman in 1950s America, who died of cervical cancer, and whose cells (or rather whose cancer's cells) were taken and used for research. It's not clear what level of consent, if any, she gave for this. The HeLa cells grew very rapidly and, unlike other cultured cells, did not die: this made them ideal for experimental purposes.( Read more... )