Doctors took her cells without asking.
Those cells never died.
They launched a medical revolution and a multimillion-dollar industry.
More than twenty years later, her children found out.
Their lives would never be the same.

THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS

By REBECCA SKLOOT

THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS (Crown; February 2010), by Rebecca Skloot, 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.

Born in 1920 in Clover, Virginia, Henrietta Lacks was a poor tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors. In 1951, she developed a strangely aggressive cancer, and doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital took a tissue sample without her knowledge. She died without knowing that her cells would become immortal—the first to grow and survive indefinitely in culture. HeLa cells, as they are called, were essential to developing the polio vaccine. 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. Even today, HeLa is the most widely used cell line in labs worldwide, bought and sold by the billions. If you could pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, they would weigh more than 50 million metric tons—more than a hundred Empire State Buildings.

After learning about the HeLa cell line in high school, Rebecca Skloot became consumed by curiosity about the woman behind the cells. During the decade it took her to chase down and chronicle this remarkable story, she journeyed from state-of-the-art scientific laboratories to the tobacco fields of southern Virginia to East Baltimore, where the Lacks family lives today. She spent years winning the trust of Henrietta’s daughter, Deborah, who longed to know more about her mother and to better understand the science behind her cells, which often seemed more like science fiction. With this book, we too become immersed in the story of the Lacks family, and are shocked to discover that Henrietta’s husband and children did not find out about her “immortality,” or the enormous profits her cells had generated, until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists investigating HeLa began using blood samples from her family in research without informed consent. The family had grown up surrounded by preaching, faith healing, and voodoo; suddenly they were plunged into a world of arcane-sounding science, wrestling with feelings of pride, betrayal, and fear. While biotech companies had made millions selling HeLa, many of Henrietta’s descendants could not even afford health insurance.

THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS marks the debut of an outsize new talent in narrative nonfiction. Rebecca Skloot brilliantly weaves together the Lackses’ story?past and present?with the story of the first culturing of HeLa cells, the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, and the birth of bioethics. She combines investigative reporting, crystalline science writing, and riveting narrative. The result is a book that leaves as indelible an impression as Henrietta’s cells.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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 is a contributing editor for Popular Science magazine and has also been a correspondent for NPR and PBS. A former vice president of the National Book Critics Circle, she is on the faculty at the University of Memphis, where she teaches creative nonfiction, and she blogs at Culture Dish, hosted by Seed Magazine’s science blogs. Skloot has an undergraduate degree in biomedical science from Colorado State University and an MFA in nonfiction writing from the University of Pittsburgh. She lives in Memphis, Tennessee.

ABOUT THE BOOK
THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS
By Rebecca Skloot
Crown • On-sale date: February 2, 2010 • ISBN 978-1-4000-5217-2 • Price: $26.00

Visit Rebecca Skloot on the web:
www.rebeccaskloot.com
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks