BookshelfJacob deGroot-Maggetti

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks – Rebecca Skloot

Thoughts: I enjoyed this book. Rebecca Skloot weaves together the stories of Henrietta Lacks and her family, research done using her cells after her death, and Skloot’s own experiences tracking down information for the book. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks vividly illustrates the complicated ethics surrounding the HeLa cell line, which enabled enormous medical breakthroughs while spawning a large industry, and leading to breaches of privacy and unethical experiments.

(The notes below are not a summary of the book, but rather raw notes - whatever I thought, at the time, might be worth remembering.)

Skloot, Rebecca. 2011. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Broadway Books.

Posted: Mar 05, 2021. Last updated: Aug 31, 2023.