Rebecca Skloot

A fascinating book for the science needs among us, a heart-rending book for those who feel the horrors of Henrietta’s life, an interesting ethical discussion about who owns your bits once you have them taken out.
I was astonished, even though I’d heard about Henrietta Lacks and her amazing cells, to find out how very far they’d gone, how much science had benefited from them. We have all sorts of medicines and understanding of cell functions, vaccines and grasp of cell culturing, all over the world. Henrietta’s astoundingly virulent cancer cells made the development of the polio vaccine possible, for example. The cells also forced researchers to use enhanced sterile techniques as if a HeLa cell got into your cell cultures it would kill off every other type of cell…
I’ve been meaning to read this book for ages and I’m glad I finally did. I am still curious about how such a virulent cancer developed- of course people at the time blamed Henrietta and accused her of sleeping around (she did have syphillis), but her husband’s role in giving her the virus that caused her cancer is never mentioned. I find that sad. I find it sad, too, that her family tossed her into an unmarked grave, unmourned by most of them for years.
The ethics of taking tissue samples from a dying woman without her consent remain huge, but as Sklootide identified in her research, we all end up donating our discarded bits whether we want to or not- they are sliced off of us and considered waste- unless someone wants to take them and use their DNA in research.
For me, this isn’t a big thing. I figure if they can use any of me that I’m no longer using, go for it. But the grinding poverty the Lacks family endured while Henrietta’s cells were re-sold (Johns Hopkins didn’t sell them- they shared them widely and free to aid research) seems evil. But then the grinding poverty and lack of access to medical care in the US IS wrong. A caring society would not allow it to persist.… (mere)