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Visit Huntsman Cancer Institute’s Cancer Learning Center to learn how you can check out The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and find more resources about cancer. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot is a non-fiction book that tells the story of Lacks and her HeLa cells, or the immortal cell line that doctors retrieved from her cervical cancer cells. It also considers the ethical dilemmas of using patient cells without knowledge or consent, the way race played a part in how Lacks was treated, and the impact on her family decades later. The book introduces us to the woman who helped change modern medicine.
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Previously, very few people knew the source of HeLa cells. The acclaimed nonfiction book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot tells Henrietta Lacks’s cancer story and the revolutionary research, ethical questions, and racism wrapped up in the use of her cells. HeLa enabled the development of in vitro fertilization, the first clone of a human cell, the development of the polio vaccine, advances in gene mapping, and more. Named after the first two letters of her first and last name, HeLa cells were used in many different medical experiments because they could be grown so easily in the lab. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks Summary After an offhand comment during a college biology class about the woman whose cells became the foundation for many of the medical advances of the 20th century, science journalist Rebecca Skloot became interested in learning more about the mysterious Henrietta Lacks. Gey grew the cells continuously in the lab, something that had never been done before. Because of a mutation, her cells were able to survive and reproduce outside the body. Lacks’s cells ended up in the lab of cell biologist Dr. The cells were taken without Lacks’s knowledge or consent. Her doctor took two biopsies, one of cancer cells and one of healthy cells. In 1951, a Black woman named Henrietta Lacks went to Johns Hopkins Hospital to have a doctor look at a “knot” in her womb, which turned out to be cervical cancer. Originally published April 2018 Updated February 2021
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