![]() My one issue with the book was the jumping back and forth through time. It also included stories from both the family’s and the researcher’s lives before and after the cells were taken, even though these anecdotes were rarely directly related to the cells themselves. Rather than being a list of facts, there were many detailed descriptions of the people involved and the events. Part of what made it so interesting to read was the style of writing. ![]() If Skloot had wanted to, she could have left this part out and we’d have just thought he was an awful person. He did not do it out of curiosity, but rather a worry that they could cause cancer in the researchers studying them, so while it was a terrible thing to do, he at least did it for a good reason. When Southam was injecting the cells into people without their informed consent, the author makes sure to explain the reasoning behind it. While the book was clearly on the side of the Lacks family, I would not consider it biased. The family of Henrietta, for example, had no clue that her cells were still alive until almost 25 years later when they were asked for DNA samples because it was discovered that the HeLa were contaminating other cultures. I had not expected to be quite so alarmed by the poor ethics shown by many of the researchers and doctors. These cells, fortunately, are not contagious as the very questionable human experiments by Chester Southam beginning in 1954 proved. Going into the book I was interested, having previously enjoyed reading about the contagious cancer found in dogs which originated approximately 11,000 years ago. Now, 70 years after her death aged 31 in 1951, they are still widely used. They played a vital role in trialing the vaccine for Polio and many other diseases, as well as helping to make huge strides in the field of biomedical science. They were given to many scientists around the world to use for research and experimentation, eventually with a ‘cell factory’ being set up to mass produce them. ![]() Unlike most cells, the cancerous HeLa cells, which were extracted without her knowledge when she was undergoing treatment for cervical cancer, did not die after a limited amount of cycles and instead continued replicating. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is about the woman behind the HeLa cells, her family and what those cells have been used for. You can find one of our winning submissions below, and another here.īook: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks At the end of this we asked our participants to write a book review for a competition. Centre of the Cell recently finished hosting a book club for our YMS members. ![]()
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