Book Review: “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” by Rebecca Skloot

I first heard about “the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” from a colleage at work. Every few days she’d tell me some interesting story or fact about Henrietta or HeLa cells at lunch and eventually I broke down and bought a copy for myself…and I’m very glad I did. Given the author, Rebecca Skloot‘s, background in biology, I expected a book describing the origins of and discoveries made from HeLa cells. While that was definitely a major discussion point of the book, Rebecca Skloot delved much further and truly brought to life the human side of this story, something very few have ever heard.


The book begins where most biographies begin, the birth and childhood of the protaganist, Henrietta. Given the lack of written documentation and the passage of time since Henrietta’s death, it isn‘t far into the book that we find ourselves at John Hopkin’s, nearing the “birth“ of HeLa, where documentation was more readily available. Now I have to be honest, when the book turned its attention to the isolation of HeLa, I expected the remainder of the book to focus on the science of HeLa cells, how they were maintained, what discoveries were made using them, the role of Human Papilloma Virus in their transformation etc. etc. And while these things were discussed to a limited extent, Rebecca Skloot took the story another direction, specifically, looking at the ethical issues regarding the use of Henrietta’s cells and the effect the isolation of the cells had on Henrietta’s family, particularly her children. In fact, the majority of the book chronicles the efforts of Henrietta’s youngest daughter to come to terms with the legacy of her mother’s cells.

Overall I found the book to be quite compelling and difficult to put down. While part of me wishes there was more detail given to HeLa cells themselves, I think Rebecca Skloot was correct in avoided those details, as it might have turned off a more general audience and taken away from the true questions she wanted the readers to ask themselves. Instead of turning into a technical history of HeLa cells, the reader is left with a myriad of ethical questions about medicine, namely, who should own tissue collected from medical procedures? Who should profit from the use of those materials? How much consent is needed from patients to save tissues collected from routine medical procedures? Etc. etc. While a lot of the issues revolving around Henrietta and her family would unlikely happen today as there are new rules in place (Thank you four hour HIPA training), the themes resonate to similar issues that are ongoing today. Is it ok to patent genes? What types of permissions from patients are needed to submit samples for the national bio bank? Who has rights to access those samples? Just to name a few.

All and all I highly recommend “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” for anyone interested in the history of science or medical ethics, and would still recommend the book for fun casual reading. Now, as stated in my bio, I am a research scientist and have used HeLa cells extensively over the course of my research life time. Before reading this book I never really thought about the story of the cells, they were merely a tool, but I now have a much greater appreciation of where they come from and the significance to those who knew Henrietta. While my data was not ground breaking, or even ground scratching, it did help me grow as a scientist and for that I am grateful to the contribution of Henrietta Lacks.