The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

#569
Title: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Author: Rebecca Skloot
Publisher: Crown
Year: 2010
384 pages
either
Skloot delivers an excellent blend of personal story and and the history that proceeds it, derives from it, and to some extent has overridden it. In its tone and interests, it is similar to Fadiman's The Spirit Catches You and you Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures, neither entirely condemning nor exonerating any of the people and institutions involved. Skloot brings alive the answer to the question of why we need Institutional Review Boards and Human Subjects review, invoking the Tuskeegee syphilis studies among others to illustrate the pattern of using less- powerful and more vulnerable groups as experimental subjects with inadequate consent (or, later, inadequate informed consent). Skloot does not take sides in the matter of whether Henrietta Lacks's family ought to benefit economically from the scientific use of her cell line. She facilitates each player's stand and arguments without much comment, which seems reasonable to me. It doe seem as though there is an ironic revenge in HeLa's ability to infiltrate and overwhelm other sample cell lines.