The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Title: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Author: Rebecca Skloot

Pages: 377

Genre: Non-Fiction

Grade: A-

Synopsis: From the sub-text on the cover of the book that took the author ten years to research and write: "Doctors took her cells without asking.  Those cells never died.  They launched a medical revolution and a multimillion-dollar industry. More than twenty years later, her children found out.  Their lives would never be the same."

My Review: This is a fascinating book about a topic that I knew nothing about.  In 1951, Henrietta Lacks was suffering from a very-aggressive form of cervical cancer.  Her doctors took a small biopsy and sent it to the labs where her cells became the first line of immortal cells.  It is estimated that enough HeLa cells have been grown to weigh 50 million metric tons.  Her cells have contributed to virtually all of the medical advancements in the last 5-6 decades including the polio vaccine, cancer treatments and the effect of the atom bomb on cells.  My single complaint is that it often feels like the book is repeating itself.

From the Book:  "I later learned that while Elsie was at Crownsville, scientists often conducted research on patients there without consent, including one study titled "Pneumoencephalographic and skull X-ray studies in 100 epileptics." Pneumoencephalography was a technique developed in 1919 for taking images of the brain, which floats in a sea of liquid. That fluid protects the brain from damage, but makes it very difficult to X-ray, since images taken through fluid are cloudy. Pneumoencephalography involved drilling holes into the skulls of research subjects, draining the fluid surrounding their brains, and pumping air or helium into the skull in place of the fluid to allow crisp X-rays of the brain through the skull. the side effects--crippling headaches, dizziness, seizures, vomiting--lasted until the body naturally refilled the skull with spinal fluid, which usually took two to three months.  Because pneumoencephalography could cause permanent brain damage and paralysis, it was abandoned in the 1970s. 

"There is no evidence that the scientists who did research on patients  at Crownsville got consent from either the patients of their parents.  Bases on the number of patients listed in the pneumoencephalography studyand the years it was conducted, Lurz told me later, it most likely involved every epileptic child in the hospital including Elsie.  The same is likely true of at lest on other study called "The Use of Deep Temporal Leads in the Study of Psychomotor Epilepsy," which involved inserting metal probes into patients' brains."