 The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot, c. 2010
Henrietta Lacks, an African American mother of five, was undergoing treatment for cancer at Johns Hopkins University in 1951 when tissue samples were removed without her knowledge or permission and used to create HeLa, the first “immortal” cell line. HeLa has been sold around the world and used in countless medical research applications, including the development of the polio vaccine. Science writer Skloot, who worked on this book for ten years, entwines Lacks’s biography, the development of the HeLa cell line and her own story of building a relationship with Lacks’s children. Full of dialog and vivid detail, this reads like a novel but the science behind the story is also deftly handled. (Library Journal)
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