Henrietta Lacks, an African American woman in her late twenties/early thirties, went to Johns Hopkins hospital to be treated for cervical cancer. Little did she know, doctors took samples of her tumor and cultured them in a lab. Henrietta died, just months later, but her cells lived on - and grew by leaps and bounds. Doctors and scientists gave away, and eventually sold these cells for research purposes. But Henrietta's family knew nothing about any of this.
Henrietta's family, her husband and four children, had very little education, and were very upset when they learned Henrietta's cells had been taken without permission. They knew nothing of how the cells were being used, or even what a cell was, but they knew they had been wronged. They refused to talked to reporters or scientists, because the more they "learned" the more scared and confused they became.
Rebecca Skloot first heard about Henrietta Lacks, or the HeLa cells in her high school biology class. Years later, she befriended the Lacks family, and strove to find out what happened to the cells and get some compensation for her family. Henrietta, her brothers, her father, and many other immediate family members could not afford health care. Yet the HeLa cells were fighting cancer, helping to create disease altering medicines, and much much more.
I won't say that this book is the most fun to read, but it is very informative. I enjoyed learning about this family and the trials they suffered. I also enjoyed watching the family's attitudes transition from fear and anger to pride in what happened to Henrietta.
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