The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot: book review

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (2010) is the true story of the woman who changed the future of medicine in the late 1940s due to HeLa, the name given to the world’s first immortal human cells taken from her tumour – described as ‘’one of the most important things that happened to medicine in the last hundred years.’’

HeLa cells (pronounced hee-lar) contributed significantly to the study of cervical cancer in a culture laboratory – and also polio, herpes, leukemia, influenza, haemophilia, and Parkinson’s disease: In culture, cancer cells can go on dividing indefinitely, if they have a continual supply of nutrients, and thus are said to be ‘’immortal.’’

Loretta (Henrietta) Pleasant (1920-1951), an African American, married David Lacks in 1941, and had five children: Lawrence, Elsie, David (Sonny), Deborah, and Joe (Zakariyya). They lived in Baltimore, Maryland, in a time of segregation.

At the time of her cancer diagnosis in 1951, Howard Jones and his boss, Richard Wesley TeLinde, of John Hopkins Hospital, were ‘’involved in a heated nationwide debate over what qualified as cervical cancer, and how best to treat it.’’ TeLinde had a theory, ‘’but few in the field believed him.’’ He wanted to prove that two different types of cancers – carcinoma in situ and invasive carcinoma – looked and behaved similarly in the laboratory by growing samples from the two cervical cancer tissues and normal cervical tissues so that he could make comparisons – something never done before. He was the first to grow immortal human cells.

On 5 February 1951, for her invasive carcinoma, Henrietta began radium treatment, used to treat cervical cancer since the early 1900s. But first, TeLinde took two dime-sized tissue samples: one from the tumour and one from the nearby healthy cells, and sent them to George Gey’s laboratory. Although at the time ‘’no law or code of ethics required doctors to ask permission before taking tissue from a living patient, the law made it very clear that performing an autopsy or removing tissues from the dead without permission was illegal.’’

Much of the book tells about the process of growing the tissues successfully, when all other times had failed. They didn’t know what nutrients were required to keep the tissues alive, where to get them, or how best to supply them. There are some interesting methods, such as the Gey Chicken Bleeding Technique. Henrietta’s healthy cells died as soon as they were put into culture, but her cancer cells ‘’kept growing like nothing anyone had seen, doubling … every twenty-four hours … accumulating by the millions.’’ This was the first time this had happened in Gey’s lab.

Henrietta was beautiful, fun, great with children, and brought out the good in everyone. She kept her pain and illness secret so as not to worry people. This is her story, told in a compassionate way. She initially went home after the treatment, her tumour had completely vanished, but by June she knew something was eating her whole body. Until that point no one knew she was sick. Her cousin Sadie said ‘The only thing you could tell was in her eyes. Her eyes were tellin you that she wasn’t gonna be alive no more.’ Henrietta returned to hospital and remained there until her death on 4 October 1951 at the age of 31.

This is not just the exposition of Henrietta and her cells, but also of her ancestry, her husband, and her children, and their ‘’lifelong struggle to make peace with the existence of those cells’’ – those immortal cells that are still multiplying, still living outside her body, to this day.

This book is also about the development of human cell research – on prisoners, patients already dying, and volunteers – as well as privacy issues, culture contamination, and human cell ownership. HeLa cells have also been grown in space and combined with animal cells to make hybrid cells, raising ethical issues.

The history of Henrietta Lacks and the HeLa cells raises important issues regarding science, ethics, race, and class. And also of deception and lies, secrecy, communication and ignorance, paranoia, trust, fame, and legacy. Poignantly told, it is the story of the life behind the science, and one everyone, especially everyone in the medical sector, should read.

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).