Share thisI love a good story. Little did I know how good of a story I would find in the book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. Within the pages of the author’s debut book, I found a remarkable story of a fantastic scientific discovery, a slice of American history, a glimpse of both family tragedy and strength, and a look forward into the challenges facing science, research, and discoveries in regards to bioethics.
A Most Remarkable Discovery
For years, researchers had pursued the possibility of developing a human cell line for use in countless studies but had only found failure. A routine tissue sample taken from a woman with cancer and placed in culture proved different. The culture lived and thrived, it doubled itself every 24 hours. It became predictable. It could be watched, manipulated, frozen, and regenerated. At last, an immortal human cell line was found. The year was 1951.
Since that time, those cells, known as HeLa, have been studied, injected, shot into space, shared, and sold around the world; and they revolutionized cellular research. They became vital in developing the Polio vaccine and uncovering secrets of cancer, viruses, and even the effects of the Atom bomb. Arguably the biggest medical research discovery in the last 100 years, the HeLa cell line became a multi-million dollar industry in both its production and its use.
The Humble Beginnings
HeLa stands for the first and last name of its donor, Henrietta Lacks. Henrietta, a poor Southern tobacco farmer from Virginia, grew up working the same land that her slave ancestors did generations before her. She lived, she laughed, and she liked to dance. She became a wife and a mother, and loved to paint her toenails red. After a move to Baltimore and during the struggles of raising a family, she developed cancer. She not only endured the hardship that a disease like cancer produces, but also the segregated society in which she lived. She attended the free clinic, and in the “colored” procedure rooms, she received the treatments available at that time. She quietly suffered through the pain of the cancer, barely mentioning it to anyone else. Henrietta Lacks grew sicker and the cancer spread, eventually taking her life. Her body was returned to the land of her childhood and she was placed in an unmarked grave somewhere near her mother in the family cemetery.
Henrietta left this world with little acknowledgment and no fanfare, save what her immediate family could give in prayers and sadness at her passing. Henrietta’s story was likely to pass into history with no perceptible difference in the world, except for HeLa.
A Family Tragedy
Not until twenty years after Henrietta’s death did her family became aware of the prolific use of the HeLa cells. They learned the world knew more about their mother and her medical history than they did. The family understood that “mama’s cells” were growing somewhere in some lab and had done some tremendous things for others, yet provided little difference for them. Stress, betrayal, and lies were to be their compensation. Their efforts to uncover the history of their mother and the story of HeLa proved to be impossible. Even the efforts to recognize HeLa as Henrietta Lacks had little traction beyond wishful thinking. Henrietta Lacks and her descendents were on the brink of forever lapsing into the abyss of history and becoming an obscure trivia question.
It Just Takes One
Some thirty years after Henrietta Lacks’ death, a college instructor wrote Henrietta’s name on a blackboard. A young student, Rebecca Skloot, saw it and remembered it. Throughout Rebecca’s continued studies, the name HeLa received considerable mention but she never again heard the name of Henrietta Lacks. With a burning desire to know more, and with no explainable reason why, Rebecca Skloot set out on a ten year search to find out who Henrietta Lacks was and the true story of the HeLa cells’ origin. Rebecca’s launch into the history when she did proved critical. People, records, memories, and even a town, disappeared during her research of the story.That journey, research, and hard and frustrating work is now The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.