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Written by Rebecca Skloot

• Format: Hardcover, 384 pages
• Publisher: Crown
• On Sale: February 2, 2010
• Price: $26.00
• ISBN: 978-1-4000-5217-2 (1-4000-5217-3)

about this book

“What is The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks really about? Science, African American culture and religion, intellectual property of human tissues, Southern history, medical ethics, civil rights, the overselling of medical advances? . . . The book's broad scope would make it ideal for an institution-wide freshman year reading program.”—David J. Kroll, Professor and Chair, Pharmaceutical Sciences, North Carolina Central University

Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells–taken without her knowledge–became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. If you could pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, they’d weigh more than 50 million metric tons–as much as a hundred Empire State Buildings. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the effects of the atom bomb; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions.

Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave.

Now Rebecca Skloot takes us on an extraordinary journey, from the “colored” ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s to stark white laboratories with freezers full of HeLa cells; from Henrietta’s small, dying hometown of Clover, Virginia–a land of wooden slave quarters, faith healings, and voodoo–to East Baltimore today, where her children and grandchildren live, and struggle with the legacy of her cells.

Henrietta’s family did not learn of her “immortality” until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists investigating HeLa began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. And though the cells had launched a multimillion-dollar industry that sells human biological materials, her family never saw any of the profits. As Rebecca Skloot so brilliantly shows, the story of the Lacks family–past and present–is inextricably connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of.

Over the decade it took to uncover this story, Rebecca became enmeshed in the lives of the Lacks family–especially Henrietta’s daughter Deborah, who was devastated to learn about her mother’s cells. She was consumed with questions: Had scientists cloned her mother? Did it hurt her when researchers infected her cells with viruses and shot them into space? What happened to her sister, Elsie, who died in a mental institution at the age of fifteen? And if her mother was so important to medicine, why couldn’t her children afford health insurance?

Intimate in feeling, astonishing in scope, and impossible to put down, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks captures the beauty and drama of scientific discovery, as well as its human consequences.

Rebecca Skloot is an award-winning science writer whose articles have appeared in the New York Times Magazine; O, The Oprah Magazine; Discover; Columbia Journalism Review; and elsewhere. She has worked as a correspondent for NPR’s RadioLab and PBS’s Nova ScienceNOW, and blogs about science, life, and writing at Culture Dish, hosted by Seed Magazine. She also teaches creative nonfiction at the University of Memphis. Visit her website at rebeccaskloot.com.

What Professors Are Saying About
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks


"This is the remarkable and touching story of an African American woman, Henrietta Lacks, who died of cancer in 1951.  But living cells that were removed from her before her death continue to reproduce and thrive into the 21st century.  Readers will be fascinated, enthralled, and disturbed by this book.  Rebecca Skloot deftly weaves an African American family’s history, cell biology, and troubling ethical issues into a profoundly moving account.  The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is certain to provoke countless and prolonged discussions in college classrooms across the country and beyond. It is truly sad that Deborah, the daughter of Henrietta Lacks, did not live to read this wonderful tribute to her mother and did not learn more of her mother’s unknowing but enormous contribution to science and medicine. If you are going to read only one book during Black History month, read this one." --WILLIAM C. HINE, Professor of History, South Carolina State University

“Every scientist who conducts research using human cells should read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot's authoritative and elegantly crafted history of the use of human cells in modern medical research. It is appealing in many dimensions: relevant scientific information (does your lab work with HeLa cells? the details of how worldwide contamination of cell lines by HeLa was exposed may make you run to test the authenticity of your cell lines); insightful illumination of the balance between the responsibilities of individuals to contribute to society, and of society to protect individuals from harm and exploitation; and captivating personal drama. This book will likely become a staple of ethics programs associated with training biomedical researchers at all stages of their careers, as it provides a meticulously-researched factual basis for raising critical philosophical issues associated with confluence of science, business, and humanity.”
–LINDA GRIFFITH, professor of biological engineering, MIT

“Heartbreaking and powerful, unsettling yet compelling, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a richly textured story of the hidden costs of scientific progress. Deftly weaving together history, journalism and biography, Rebecca Skloot’s sensitive account tells of the enduring, deeply personal sacrifice of this African American woman and her family and, at long last, restores a human face to the cell line that propelled 20th century biomedicine. A stunning illustration of how race, gender and disease intersect to produce a unique form of social vulnerability, this is a poignant, necessary and brilliant book.”
–ALONDRA NELSON, associate professor of sociology, Columbia University; editor of Technicolor: Race, Technology and Everyday Life

“This remarkable story of how the cervical cells of the late Henrietta Lacks, a poor black woman, enabled subsequent discoveries from the polio vaccine to in vitro fertilization is extraordinary in itself; the added portrayal of Lacks's full life makes the story come alive with her humanity and the palpable relationship between race, science, and exploitation. 
–PAULA J. GIDDINGS, Elizabeth A. Woodson 1922 Professor, Afro-American Studies, Smith College; author of Ida, A Sword Among Lions

“I thought I knew enough about HeLa cells and their origins, but The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks shattered that impression. I've worked with these cells all my career and have always appreciated them, and the fact that Henrietta gave science something fabulous, but I never knew how the whole affair affected the Lacks family. Rebecca Skloot vividly portrays what they went through, what HeLa has meant to science, how unscrupulous people always want to take advantage of others, and the good and bad about scientific research. In the end, I keep coming back to the same question: if we had informed consent laws back then, would Henrietta have said no? If so, it would have been a tremendous loss for science and medicine. This is an important contribution, which I hope all scientists and non-scientists will read. “
–VINCENT RACANIELLO, professor of microbiology & immunology, Columbia University; coauthor of Principles of Virology

“The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is an ideal book for classroom discussions in bioethics, history of science, and science journalism. Author Rebecca Skloot does an exceptional job of raising critical issues that should encourage both scholars and students to reevaluate the research decision making process, the way research subjects are treated, and the balance of power in this country as determined by race, economics, and even education. An incredibly readable and smart text that should be a part of countless university discussions.”
–DEBORAH BLUM, Helen Firstbrook Franklin Professor of Journalism, University of Wisconsin-Madison; author of The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and The Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York

“Almost fifteen years ago, through the Morehouse School of Medicine’s HeLa Women’s Health Conference, I began an effort to raise consciousness about the African American woman, Henrietta Lacks, who gave rise to the immortal HeLa cells. Rebecca Skloot has won the trust of the Lacks family and has told a passionate story of the agony the family has suffered, as well as their hope that new bioethical standards will evolve from their experience. Science, racism, classism, sexism will be viewed through a more knowledgeable prism as this story is illuminated. Scholars, students, and the world will continue to be served by unveiling new truths made possible by this heroine of society.”
–ROLAND A. PATTILLO, M.D., professor of obstetrics and gynecology, Morehouse School of Medicine