The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Scholars refer to her as Hela, even though she was born Henrietta Lacks. Despite the fact that she worked on the same land as her slave ancestors, a poor tobacco farmer in the South, her cells became one of medicine's most important tools: Despite the fact that she passed away more than sixty years ago, the first "immortal" human cells in the culture are still able to live today. The creation of the polio vaccine required HeLa cells. Uncover the privileged insights of malignant growth, infections and the impacts of the nuclear bomb. helped make significant advancements like cloning, gene mapping, and in vitro fertilization; For billions, it has been bought and sold.
Henrietta Lacks, on the other hand, is virtually unknown due to her unmarked grave.
The family of Henrietta did not learn of her "immortality" until more than two decades after her death, when researchers looking into Hela began conducting research on her husband and children without their consent. Furthermore, despite the fact that Cells established a multimillion-dollar business selling human biological materials, her family received no share of the profits. The Lacks family's story, both past and present, is inextricably linked to the dark history of experiments on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and legal battles over whether we have control over the things we make, as Rebecca Sklott so skillfully demonstrates.
Over the course of the ten years it took for this story to be uncovered, Rebecca was associated with the existence of the Remiss family — especially Henrietta's little girl Deborah. Deborah was consumed by inquiries: did researchers clone her mom? In order to obtain her cells, did they kill her? And if her mother is so significant to medicine, why do her children not have access to health insurance?
Private in feeling, shocking in degree, and difficult to put down, The Unfading Existence of Henrietta Needs catches the excellence and show of a logical disclosure, as well as its human results.