I had the impression at times that the culture of Henrietta Lacks’ cells and the subsequent profits derived from their use (that the family never benefited from) was blamed for everything that went wrong with the Lacks family afterwards, but there was some serious dysfunction in the family before Henrietta ever went to hospital. I’m not American, so I didn’t come to this book with any personal background experience of USA race relationships or much knowledge of the history and implications of segregation, therefore my reactions to this book are as an outsider looking in. The author certainly portrayed this well. I wondered whether this was really necessary, but an important aspect of this book is the recognition that behind all the science and research, there are real people. ![]() Positive, in that the scientific concepts were explained well enough for a lay person to understand and in a narrative style negative, where the author injected certain incidents, such as the abuse of Henrietta’s children by family members after she died, and other intimate family details, throughout the book. To me this was both positive and negative. Rebecca Skloot is a journalist, which partly explains the readability of her book, and also the style in which she writes the story. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a real page turner of a book and quite fascinating generally. These cells became one of the most important tools in medicine and have been used in the development of the polio vaccine, in gene mapping, cloning, cancer research, and researching the effects of zero gravity and radiation on the human body. Gey and his assistants had grown the first immortal human cells which they named ‘HeLa,’ for Henrietta and Lacks. The tumour turned out to be a very aggressive form of cervical cancer, and before long, millions of the cells had reproduced themselves in the laboratory. Henrietta Lack’s tumour cells were put into culture and they didn’t merely survive, but grew like nothing else had before. A sample of tissue from her cervix was sent to George Gey, the head of tissue culture research at Hopkins.Īt that time, if doctors wanted to use tissue from patients for purely research purposes, patient consent was not required, although it is now. That year, Henrietta Lacks, a 30 year old black mother of five young children, was admitted to the coloured ward of John Hopkins Hospital to have a biopsy of her cervix. Mouse cells had been cultured successfully, but every attempt to culture human cells had failed. That’s the point.For many years scientists had been trying to grow human cells outside of the human body in order to have a continuous (immortal) line of cells that would constantly replenish and that could be used to study any number of things, especially viruses. Under the rigorous eye of executive producer Winfrey (she’s the poster image), the science story is pushed to the margins, and the focus is the family, their cultural, personal and racial legacies the heart of the matter.Īgain, not the story we (establishment TV critics and HBO geeks) thought it would be. “The family.” Over Skloot’s objections, he rhymes off, “The mentally damaged daughter, the indigent ex-con brother, the manic-depressive daughter.” Skloot sputters, “The story of Henrietta is about legacies: cultural, personal, racial.” But he talks over her: “Eliminate the family.” Skloot meets with her older, white editor (John Benjamin Hickey). “They see you, it’s ‘Rebecca, come on in.’ So go on, gal, keep on being white.” “They see me coming, they lock the door,” Deborah says. Skloot tells Deborah about that conversation. “It’s not like those people would have understood anyway.” “I suspect there was no effort to explain anything to them in great detail,” he says haughtily. Skloot meets with the older, white doctor (Reed Birney) who studied Henrietta’s children. ![]() Instead, three scenes smack at the midpoint tell a different tale: You think this telefilm is going to be that story, told by reporter Rebecca Skloot (Rose Byrne), with the help of Henrietta’s daughter Deborah (Oprah Winfrey). Henrietta Lacks (Renée Elise Goldsberry, in flashbacks) died of cancer, but her cells live on they have a remarkable capacity to reproduce infinitely in labs and have been central to every significant scientific breakthrough since her death. The Show: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
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