THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS
 

Rebecca L.Skloot is an American journalist and author focuses on science and medicine.
Her first book The Immortal life of Henrietta Lacks was ones of the best sales in 2010.
Rebecca Skloot took more than ten years to reconstitute elements to write both as a biography and a scientific book and it earned her the price of the book of the year.
In her book R.Skloot explains that in 1951, the Hopkins hospital did  not just heal the sick , it had a research departement which  hoped developed experiment in vitro (outside of a living organism) but no ones had managed to cultivate human cells long enough to undertake serious work.

Henrietta Lacks was born on August 1st, 1920 in Roanoke, Virginia. Just the first two syllables of her first name and her name: HeLa. This American black woman almost illitrate and cancerous, was one of the most important figure in modern medicine.

On Fabuary 4th, 1951 Henrietta travels with her husband 30 km which separate her home from the Baltimore hospital, only institution in the region , which treats freely the poor and welcomes colored people . She is 31 and suffers from stomach ache, the gynecologist discovered her a cancerous tumor in her womb. The doctors removed her cells to study then without her consent, a common practice at that time. Dr G.Gey who headed the research laboratory noted that her healthy cells were dead but her cancerous cells remain alive and they reproduced fastly: Gey had successfully achieved a culture of human immortal cells.
It is also on HeLa than the researchers have tested freezing cells and also standarzing the protocol of cells culture.
It is also thanks to HeLa that science moved forward in the field of genetic, the fight against HIV or understanding cancer.

In 1952, HeLa saved thousands of lives from polio allowing the elaboration of a vaccine. In the year 60, the success of Hela ultimately intersted the journalist but the doctors prefered  not reveal anything about Henrietta’s identity , they were scared of reproaches for not asking the consent of Henrietta or her family .
It will have to wait the year 90 for her real name to be revealed to general public.

So this is her life and the life of her family (especially the life of her children and grandchildren) who is discussed in this book, how they became aware and accepted the immortality of Henrietta and the fact that part of her haved been taken, without her consent.
Mid novel, mid scientific document, this book is about all topics: science, scientists, the consanguineous marriages, the profits from these cells while the Lacks’ family still lives in extreme poverty.

The book is impeccably researched and easy to read, It is a great balance of science and story telling. Great questions of ethics and scientific research.