The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks

Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. Born a poor black tobacco farmer, her cancer cells taken without her knowledge became a multimillion-dollar industry and one of the most important tools in medicine. Yet Henrietta's family did not learn of her 'immortality' until more than twenty years after her death, with devastating consequences......

Rebecca Skloot's fascinating account is the story of the life, and afterlife, of one woman who changed the medical world forever. Balancing the beauty and drama of scientific discovery with dark questions about who owns the stuff our bodies are made of, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is an extraordinary journey in search of the soul and story of a real woman, whose cells live on today in all four corners of the world.

Henrietta and David Lacks, circa 1945.	Elsie Lacks, Henrietta’s older daughter, about five years before she was committed to Crownsville State Hospital, with a diagnosis of “idiocy.”	Deborah Lacks at about age four.	The home-house where Henrietta was raised, a four-room log cabin in Clover, Virginia, that once served as slave quarters. (1999)	Main Street in downtown Clover, Virginia, where Henrietta was raised, circa 1930s.

Margaret Gey and Minnie, a lab technician, in the Gey lab at Hopkins, circa 1951.	Deborah with her children, LaTonya and Alfred, and her second husband, James Pullum, in the mid-1980s.	In 2001, Deborah developed a severe case of hives after learning upsetting new information about her mother and sister.	Deborah and her cousin Gary Lacks standing in front of drying tobacco, 2001.	The Lacks family in 2009.