- #THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS BY REBECCA SKLOOT PDF SKIN#
- #THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS BY REBECCA SKLOOT PDF FULL#
HeLa cells were the first cells to be cloned, and they were bombarded with radiation to see how they responded (it was the Cold War era, after all). HeLa cells were subsequently used in an array of research-genetics, virology, infectious and sexually transmitted diseases, even cosmetics.
The study necessitated a tremendous number of cultured human cells-HeLa cells, initially provided by George Gey and grown in massive quantities at the Tuskegee Institute, the renowned black university. Progress in ScienceĪround the same time that Henrietta was buried, an ambitious study was launched to prove the effectivity of Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine. George Gey had developed effective and reproducible cell culturing and preservation techniques, and he was sending HeLa cells all over the world. In a cruel twist, as Henrietta’s health declined, HeLa cells were energizing cell research. She died on October 4, 1951, less than a year after she first visited Hopkins.Īfter an autopsy, during which more samples were taken from Henrietta’s body without her family’s informed consent, Henrietta was buried in Clover in an unmarked grave. In a matter of weeks tumors colonized her body, and she was admitted to the hospital to undergo treatment to ease her pain and perhaps prolong her life. Initially the doctors found nothing wrong, but after Henrietta returned to Hopkins several times, a doctor ordered an X-ray and found a mass blocking her urethra. Sometime after her course of treatment ended, Henrietta began to feel aches in her abdomen.
#THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS BY REBECCA SKLOOT PDF SKIN#
Unfortunately, the radiation had a gruesome side effect: it burned the skin of her torso black. The initial radium treatment had shrunk the tumor, and subsequent X-ray treatments caused the tumor to disappear entirely. Henrietta’s cancer, meanwhile, seemed to be responding well to the radiation. Suddenly Gey had an inexhaustible supply of human cells on which to conduct experiments. Henrietta’s cells, however-dubbed “HeLa” by Gey’s lab technician-grew at a constant rate, doubling every 24 hours. Growing human cells in “culture”-i.e., in test tubes in the lab-had been an elusive advance for scientific researchers most human cells lasted a few days then died. The tumor proved malignant, and Henrietta began to undergo radiation treatments-which, at the time, consisted of radium plaques placed directly on the tumor.** The surgeon performing the initial treatment, without telling Henrietta, excised two slivers of tissue from her tumor for a researcher at Hopkins named George Gey**. Her doctor took a sample of the lump for a biopsy. In 1951, Henrietta went to Johns Hopkins Hospital after discovering a lump on her cervix.
(Sonny), Deborah, and Joe (later Zakariyya)-the last in 1950. (Elsie would later be institutionalized.)ĭay and Henrietta were married in 1941, and shortly thereafter, they moved to Turner Station, a booming industrial neighborhood in Baltimore. Four years later, she had a second child by him named Lucile Elsie, whom everyone called Elsie and who evidenced traits of a developmental disability. At fourteen, she gave birth to her first child, a son named Lawrence the father was her cousin, David “Day” Lacks. Loretta Pleasant, called Henrietta, was born in 1920 in Roanoke, Virginia, and raised in a small town in Virginia called Clover.
In the course of her reporting, Skloot became close with Deborah Lacks, Henrietta Lacks’s daughter, and much of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is devoted to Deborah’s struggles with her mother’s absence and scientific legacy.
The author of the book, science reporter Rebecca Skloot, spent 10 years researching Henrietta Lacks, her family, and the scientific advances her indefatigable cells made possible.
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