Book 1: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

To keep me honest on my bucket list, I will blog about the 30+ books I am hoping to read this year.  The finished the first last week.  And to start the year off right, it was a non-fiction.  If you remember, I am hoping to read at least 3 within the year.  I’m not a huge non-fiction reader… so will be a good challenge for me.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot is a true story that begins in 1951, when a poor black woman named Henrietta Lacks dies of cervical cancer, but pieces of the tumor that killed her were taken without her knowledge or consent and have lived on, first in one lab, then in hundreds, then thousands, then in giant factories churning out polio vaccines, then aboard rocket ships launched into space. The cells from this one tumor would spawn a multi-billion dollar industry and become a foundation of modern science--leading to breakthroughs in gene mapping, cloning and fertility and helping to discover how viruses work and how cancer develops (among a million other things). Meanwhile, Henrietta's family continued to live in poverty and frequently poor health, and their discovery decades later of her unknowing contribution--and her cells' strange survival--left them full of pride, anger, and suspicion. For a decade, Skloot doggedly but compassionately gathered the threads of these stories, slowly gaining the trust of the family while helping them learn the truth about Henrietta, and with their aid she tells a rich and haunting story that asks the questions, Who owns our bodies? And who carries our memories?

(excerpt taken from Amazon review)

I thought the book was very well written, with an incredibly engaging story line.  It read like a piece of fiction.  I enjoyed the ethical debates brought about by the book and would recommend it to anyone interested in family history, science and bioethics.

4.0 out of 5 stars