Even today, HeLa is the most widely used cell line in labs worldwide, bought and sold by the billions. They have aided in the development of in-vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping, and have helped us to better understand the workings of cancer and innumerable viruses. HeLa cells, as they are called, were essential in developing the polio vaccine. She died without knowing that her cells would become immortal-the first to grow and survive indefinitely in culture. In 1951, she developed a strangely aggressive cancer, and doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital took a tissue sample without her knowledge. Oprah Winfrey and Alan Ball are producing the film version for HBO.īorn in 1920 in Clover, Virginia, Henrietta Lacks was a poor tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors. It has also been adopted by hundreds of high schools and universities as part of their curriculums. Further, THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS won the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize and the Wellcome Trust Book Prize, and is being translated into more than twenty-five languages and adapted into a young-adult edition. Skloot has established a foundation () that began awarding grants in August 2010, among them tuition and books for five of Henrietta’s descendants, and assistance with health-care expenses for many of them. Since the book was published in hardcover, it has enjoyed not only tremendous commercial success but has also had a significant and rarely seen impact on how scientists and medical researchers approach their work how doctors interact with their patients how courts rule in legal cases involving tissue samples taken without informed consent discussions of future policy changes and of course the Lacks family itself. It tells the rich, enthralling story of Henrietta Lacks, the forgotten woman behind one of the most important tools in modern medicine, and of Lacks’s descendants, many of whom feel betrayed by the scientific establishment. Also featured on more than 40 other “Best of the Year” lists-Īfter nearly one year on the New York Times bestseller list (and counting), the widely heralded THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS by Rebecca Skloot will be published in paperback on March 8, 2011, by Broadway Paperbacks. īooklist Top of the List-Best Nonfiction Book.Library Journal Top Ten Book of the Year.New York magazine Top Ten Book of the Year.Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year.News & World Report Top Debate-Worthy Book Boston Globe Best Nonfiction Book of the Year.
Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of the Year.Washington Post Book World Top Ten Book of the Year.American Library Association Notable Book.It’s a story 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’re made of.Press Release: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (Paperback) by Rebecca SklootĬontact: Penny NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER WIDELY LAUDED ASĮntertainment Weekly #1 Nonfiction Book of the Year The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks tells a riveting story of the collision between ethics, race, and medicine of scientific discovery and faith healing and of a daughter consumed with questions about the mother she never knew.
Made into an HBO movie by Oprah Winfrey and Alan Ball, this New York Times bestseller takes readers on an extraordinary journey, from the “colored” ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s to stark white laboratories with freezers filled with HeLa cells, from Henrietta’s small, dying hometown of Clover, Virginia, to East Baltimore today, where her children and grandchildren live and struggle with the legacy of her cells. Henrietta’s cells have been bought and sold by the billions, yet she remains virtually unknown, and her family can’t afford health insurance. She was a poor black tobacco farmer whose cells-taken without her knowledge in 1951-became one of the most important tools in medicine, vital for developing the polio vaccine, cloning, gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, and more. Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa.