The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
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Manufacturer: Crown
Written By: Rebecca Skloot
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 616.02774092
EAN: 9781400052172
Feature: ISBN13: 9781400052172
ISBN: 1400052173
Label: Crown
Manufacturer: Crown
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 384
Publication Date: 2010-02-02
Publisher: Crown
Release Date: 2010-02-02
Studio: Crown
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Features
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ISBN13: 9781400052172
Condition: New
Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed
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Editorial Reviews for The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
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Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. If you could pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, they’d weigh more than 50 million metric tons—as much as a hundred Empire State Buildings. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb’s effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions.
Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave.
Now Rebecca Skloot takes us on an extraordinary journey, from the “colored” ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s to stark white laboratories with freezers full of HeLa cells; from Henrietta’s small, dying hometown of Clover, Virginia—a land of wooden slave quarters, faith healings, and voodoo—to East Baltimore today, where her children and grandchildren live and struggle with the legacy of her cells.
Henrietta’s family did not learn of her “immortality” until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists investigating HeLa began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. And though the cells had launched a multimillion-dollar industry that sells human biological materials, her family never saw any of the profits. As Rebecca Skloot so brilliantly shows, the story of the Lacks family—past and present—is inextricably connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of.
Over the decade it took to uncover this story, Rebecca became enmeshed in the lives of the Lacks family—especially Henrietta’s daughter Deborah, who was devastated to learn about her mother’s cells. She was consumed with questions: Had scientists cloned her mother? Did it hurt her when researchers infected her cells with viruses and shot them into space? What happened to her sister, Elsie, who died in a mental institution at the age of fifteen? And if her mother was so important to medicine, why couldn’t her children afford health insurance?
Intimate in feeling, astonishing in scope, and impossible to put down, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks captures the beauty and drama of scientific discovery, as well as its human consequences.
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Consumer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: wonderfully addictive and spellbinding
Comment: from the first page I was hooked and stayed up too late many a night because I didn't want to put it down.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: shameful medical practice
Comment: I found the beginning of this utterly captivating, very hard to put down. Skloot does a good job of addressing the science behind the subject without making it too technical. The part where the story derails is when the family gets involved, particularly the time spent with Mrs. Lacks' daughter, Deborah. The author seems to focus more on the struggles of Deborah and her apparent disabilities, maybe in a human-interest sort of way, but I felt that it began to become a bit more exploitative. I think it is very important to shine a light on the unethical way the black population was treated by the medical profession and how shameful it is that the Lacks family has not benefited in any way from the massive scale of production of the HeLa cell line. If this book had merely contained the first half, or left the drama of the second half out or at least shortened it some, I think this book would have appealed to me more as a whole. I would certainly recommend this to friends, but with a disclaimer of the soap-opera like drama that comes in at the end.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Very delayed shipment. I'm completely dissatisfied with Amazon's shipping service
Comment: This was a book order for my son. He started school on the 25th.
Item was ordered on the 23rd of August.
Amazon sent shipping information to FedEx on the 23rd of August.
FedEx did not receive the actual item from Amazon until August 30th.
Today is 9/1/2010 and shipment estimated to arrive 9/4/2010.
Amazon's systems should have alerted someone that an order is too late. Someone at Amazon should have called me the customer on the front side to notify me of the delay, and the plan to fix the issue.
I will not be using Amazon for purchases going forward. Amazon should learn about QUALITY customer service from companies like Wal-Mart.
Customer Rating:
Summary: 12 stars
Comment: I as others have stated can't believe that this is her first book. I was moved to tears because once again we african americans have been deprived of our rightful place in history/research. I wonder with the politically hateful climate we find our in today, how many white folks have benefited from this research. I daresay that not many would turn down treatment developed from this research. will be giving this book as a christmas gift. should be added to black history and research classes.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Doesn't live up to the hype
Comment: Well researched and an intriguing story, but the book is bogged down and mired in unnecessary details and asides. The author's passion for the subject shines through, and her strong, clear sentences help, but overall, the book was a let-down.
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More Information on The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Henrietta Lacks - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In her 2010 book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot documents the histories of both the HeLa cell line and the Lacks family.
Book review: 'The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks' by Rebecca ...
"The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" is a biography of the eponymous heroine and her offspring.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
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The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot, Book ...
Pub. Date: February 2010 ; 369pp Sales Rank: 113
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot - Hardcover ...
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, Category: Science - History; Biography & Autobiography; Social Science, Format: Hardcover , 384 pages, ISBN ...
Read Street: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks: reviews and ...
Among the promising books out this month -- Tuesday, in fact -- is "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks," which examines the extraordinary -- and controversial -- scientific ...
Excerpt - ‘The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,’ by Rebecca ...
“There’s a photo on my wall of a woman I’ve never met, its left corner torn and patched together with tape.”
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks | IndieBound
Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells—taken without ...
Book Review - 'The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,' by Rebecca ...
Rebecca Skloot untangles the ethical issues in the case of a woman whose cancer cells have been the basis for a vast amount of research.
'The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks' - SFGate
The name Henrietta Lacks is not one that triggers immediate recognition. But the first two letters from each of her names - HeLa - are immediately recognized by physicians ...