The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks Review

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is an evocative story of ownership over body tissues, family memories and medical breakthroughs, all enshrined amidst the ambit of poverty that encased the lives of the central family. The haunting tale of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks gradually unfolds to reveal her background as an African American mother of five who scratched a living at subsistence level on the Virginian tobacco farms during the l940s.

Henrietta’s life culminated in 1951 when she finally succumbed to a particularly aggressive form of cancer that finally claimed her life at the age of 30. Despite neither knowledge nor consent being obtained, during her final illness a sample of the cancerous tissue was removed as was widely the custom during the ethos of mid-20th century medicine. This is the background that shaped The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.

Henrietta Lack’s biopsy sample was preserved under laboratory conditions. From samples taken from this particularly potent tissue a cure was finally found for the scourge of polio, as well as providing the key for innumerable medical breakthroughs. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks reveals how surprised scientists were when they first experienced that this tissue was able to survive under laboratory conditions, describing their astonishment when it was discovered that the cells from this tissue could also actually thrive in this environment. Despite the HeLa cells continuing to provide the key to much new medical knowledge, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks reveals how Henrietta Lack’s prodigy continued to live in abject poverty, often experiencing the poor health that often accompanies such wretched poverty.

This single woman posthumously contributed to breakthroughs in gene mapping, how viruses replicate and, aside from better understanding of how cancer develops, her cells are directly attributable to the vast industry surrounding polio vaccines and the enormous revenues such companies make on an annual basis. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks unveils a simple yet evocative story of a simple woman whose life was cut short by a particularly aggressive form of cervical cancer and how the tissue taken from this cancer changed our world for the better - yet had little impact on the poverty in which her family continued to survive. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks awakes strong emotions of rights and wrongs when the ethics of a particular era are taken into account from a retrospective point of view.

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