Arts and Minds
Skloot’s ‘The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks’ Amazon’s Top Book of 2010
Henrietta Lacks. Image courtesy the Lacks family.
Rebecca Skloot spent nearly 10 years researching the story of Henrietta Lacks, a woman from Baltimore whose cancerous tissue, taken from her body when she died in 1951, have supplied researchers a practically immortal line of cells that have led to many medical breakthroughs, including a cure for polio. The book examines the legacy of Lack’s cells, dubbed HeLa cells, and the impact this had on her family, who only recently discovered the contribution their mother and matriarch made to medical science.
Her book has garnered Amazon’s Top Book of 2010.
In 2002, Van Smith wrote about Lacks and the controversy surrounding her cell line. It’s a fascinating story–consider it a primer for Skloot’s book.
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