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The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks?
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The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, very interesting story about human cell research, the woman whose cells made it possible, and her daughter. It is a compelling true story and describing it makes me want to read it again! And I second (or third) the Mary Roach books; they are sometimes LOL funny.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. A poor black tobacco farmer to whom we owe a debt of gratitude, because without her we wouldn't have half the cures to diseases we have today - including the polio vaccine.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. So while it doesn’t scream “happy birthday,” and I guess it isn’t what you’d call inspiring, I found it both interesting and compelling. Very readable. It got kind of trendy, and apparently Oprah did a thing for HBO, which usually kind of scares me away, but it’s a good book all the same.
There's also a book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. The author makes, in my opinion, an unfortunate choice to write the book from the narrative perspective of a private school educated white woman who seems to be learning about poverty for the first time. But, it's a NYT Best Seller, a quick read, and currently the most in depth history of Henrietta Lacks you can find at the moment.
If you want non-fiction that's surprisingly emotional, try The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. It's about a poor, black woman whose cells have completely changed science, but who has gone completely unrecognized. It follows her story, as well as her family's, and how her contribution has transformed modern medicine. It's a mix of science, drama, and ethics, and is completely true. I'm not doing a good job describing it, but it's a very interesting read.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot It's 400pgs but ridiculously amazing.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks was pretty kickass. It's the story of a woman whose cancer cells were the first to prove "immortal," endlessly being reproduced for research.
Check it out:
>The Immortal Life of Hennrietta
Based on the book by the same name by Rebecca Skloot
https://www.amazon.com/Immortal-Life-Henrietta-Lacks/dp/1400052181
This is a good time to plug The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
the story of her life is tragic. Excellent book.
Sure, how about an immortal cell culture that save the lives of many humans: https://www.amazon.com/Immortal-Life-Henrietta-Lacks/dp/1400052181
Highly recommend reading / watching The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (about the HeLa line)
https://www.amazon.com/Immortal-Life-Henrietta-Lacks/dp/1400052181
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks for those wondering. Disclaimer: not an affiliate link, just someone who enjoyed the book.
One woman in history had a profound influence in history not in what she did in life her life but from her death.
In 1851, An African American woman by the Henrietta Lacks went to John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. There her doctor found a mass on her cervix and took a tissue sample without her the consent of Henrietta Lacks. She was soon diagnosed with cervical cancer and died later that year.
What was incredible though was when a physician working at John Hopkins named of George Otto Get was these samples of cancer cells from Henrietta Lack’s cervix, which was nicknamed HeLa cells and noticed something incredible – these were no ordinary cancer cells. For one they divided very rapidly. More importantly, HeLa cells were unique in tang that they could just keep dividing. You see most cancer cells and even regular cells are only capable of dividing only so many times, but HeLa cells could divide indefinitely thus were referred to as the HeLa immortal cell lines.
Why all this was so incredible was that it allowed scientists to culture a massive amount of plates of cells that we could preform tests with, that enabled us to develop a vaccine for the Polio Virus. In fact HeLa cells have been the oldest and most commonly used human cell line for over 50 years now. In fact, all the massive achievements made in modern medicine are largely in thanks of the immortal cell line of Henrietta Lacks.
Which makes it all the more tragic that after her death, Henrietta Lack’s family struggled with immense poverty and have never been given financial compensation for either a) having Henrietta Lacks literally paving the road to modern medicine or b) having Henrietta’s tissues stolen from her with her family not given access to her patient records and was not given a say in who got to have her tissues and what they’d be used for.
There’s a really great book I read in high school called The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks that I’d highly recommend you reading if you’d like to know more about Henrietta Lacks, how HeLa cells transformed the field of Medicine, and even the controversy surrounding the lack of compensation her family received.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot.
I keep mistyping my description, so here’s the Amazon link.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Synopsis: Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor black tobacco farmer whose cells—taken without her knowledge in 1951—became one of the most important tools in medicine, vital for developing the polio vaccine, cloning, gene mapping, and more. Henrietta's cells have been bought and sold by the billions, yet she remains virtually unknown, and her family can't afford health insurance. This phenomenal New York Times bestseller tells a riveting story of the collision between ethics, race, and medicine; of scientific discovery and faith healing; and of a daughter consumed with questions about the mother she never knew.
Mary Roach is another great nonfiction author.
It's a big topic and I'm no expert, but I'm happy to share some of what I know.
When black people were brought here to the US as slaves, they were considered property rather than people. They had no ownership over their bodies. Many female slaves were raped by their slave owners, and left to raise any resulting children (who would become slaves as well, and would sometimes be sold off to another family). White babies were often wet nursed by slaves, to the detriment of black babies.
Before black people were considered people in the US, they were legally considered 3/5 of a person, and having one drop of black blood meant someone was considered black. (Even now, it's why Americans consider President Obama to be black, even though his mother was white.) African Americans have faced generations of disadvantages - sharecropping, appallingly unethical STI tests, segregation, forced sterilization, redlining, the mass incarceration of black men, and the pay gap for black women. Black people here are still crawling out from under all that. Meanwhile, white politicians lead people to believe black people are to blame for these disadvantages, by trotting out terms like "welfare queen" and "black-on-black crime".
If you're interested in more reading, I recommend Ta-Nehisi Coates's long-form essay "The Case for Reparations". Rebecca Skloot's book <em>The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks</em> is a good look at how US medical and research institutions have treated black people over the course of several generations. Yaa Gyasi's <em>Homegoing</em> (fiction) is an incredible, heartbreaking look at how systemic racism ripples through generations of African Americans.
>The difference between skin cells and a fertilized egg in the womb, as I believe to be correct, is that skin cells (not only being dead), also do not have the same differentiating and human-producing capabilities that a egg does. I don't want to call it a "potential person," I'm calling it a person and saying that it's future development will include the generation of a consciousness and sentience.
And a HeLa Stem Cell Culture?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeLa
They came from a human woman, Henrietta Lacks
https://www.amazon.com/Immortal-Life-Henrietta-Lacks/dp/1400052181
There are more HeLa cells out there than were ever in Henrietta as a talking, walking, human. But you can't talk to the cells in a petri-dish. and they are alive.
http://www.amazon.com/Immortal-Life-Henrietta-Lacks/dp/1400052181/
I found it to be an amazing read.
I would urge you to read The immortal life on Henrietta Lacks. What remains of her has as much in terms of "cell division" and "energy production" as a zygote. But she's no longer a living human. What remains of her is a cell line.
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