The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
Kindle & Audible: US or CA
Morning Readers & Happy Wednesday!
It has been an amazing week, I am officially done school for the month of August and I am so excited to recommit to the blog! Up until now I’ve felt like I’ve been ‘waiting for the right moment’ with the excuse that I was ‘building a content base’. I figured no one would want to read a blog when I’ve only read 5 books, but now we are on Book Review # 27, which I am so excited to share with you!
‘The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks’ is proof that you don’t always need to read fiction, real-life can be just as wild! (Read until the end for a bit of an update)
I am so impressed with the humanity and determination shown by the author, and I feel like we are so lucky to have this piece of history recorded after 10 years of dedication and research, this was truly a passion project.
While I absolutely loved it, I’m not sure it’s quite hard-cover worthy for me, but it is by far my favorite 4-star and whether it’s kindle, paper-back or hard-cover, get this girl on your shelf!
Favorite Quotes from ‘The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks’:
“We must not see any person as an abstraction. Instead, we must see in every person a universe with its own secrets, its own treasures, with its own sources of anguish, and with some measure of triumph -Quoting Elie Wiesel”
“Christoph reached into the freezer behind him, grabbed another vial of HeLa cells…She stood stunned for a moment, staring into his outstretched hand, then grabbed the vial and began rubbing it fast between her palms, like she was warming herself in winter, “She’s cold” Deborah said”
“Christoph kept talking about cell division, but Deborah wasn’t listening. She stood mesmerized, watching one of her mother’s cells divide into two, just as they’d done when Henrietta was an embryo in her mother’s womb. Deborah and Zakariyya stared at the screen like they’d gone into a trance, mouths open, cheeks sagging. Tt was the closest they’d come to seeing their mother alive since they were babies”
“Myriad Genetics, which holds the patents on the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes responsible for most cases of hereditary breast and ovarian cancer, charges $3,000 to test for the genes. Myriad has been accused of creating a monopoly, since no one else can offer the test, and researchers can’t develop cheaper tests or new therapies without getting permission from Myriad”
“”It’s ironic,” she told me. “The Moore court’s concern was, if you give a person property rights in their tissues, it would slow down research because people might withhold access for money. But the Moore decision backfired- it just handed that commercial value to the researchers.”
“This is exactly the sort of story that books were made to tell- thorough, detailed, quietly passionate and full of revelation”
You will hands down walk away that much smarter and than much more aware of the policies that influence our healthcare systems and scientific communities worldwide. I would absolutely see this an an exceptional choice for the classroom or a book club!
Update: Wow, this is reminding me of when I read Educated, the behind the scenes is wild! As of this post, it’s been 15 years since the book’s publishing date. Rebecca went on to establish the Henrietta Lacks Foundation, ‘Helping individuals who have made important contributions to scientific research without personally benefiting from those contributions‘. Oprah Winfrey even went on to star as Deborah in the HBO production (which I will absolutely be watching) that was aired in 2017.
It’s really interesting to me to see what mass media has taken on vs. what has been given back to the family, as much of the focus in the book is what was taken without their permission and then profited from. While no specifics are given on any percentage of book sales donated towards the Henrietta Lacks Foundation, financial statements from 2022 do show that the the foundation received roughly $143,000 total for that year, and roughly $57,000 in 2011. The foundation’s website does provide testimonials from family members having received support towards their educations. If we average out a potential income over the course of 15 years and 2.5 million copies sold at a theorized 10% royalty on a $15 book and factor in taxes… really the author only made a (very) rough estimate of $125,000 a year averaged. Obviously not all contributions will be made by Rebecca, but considering she also doesn’t take an income from her work with the foundation, I think I feel ok about that. ie. It hasn’t turned into a multibillion dollar corporation that gives nothing back.
The Denver Post reports that 5 family members were paid to consult on the film, (Henrietta’s son Lawrence claimed he was offered $16,000) but no mention of any ongoing royalties. The Numbers website does state a rough income of $476,000 in domestic sales (unsure if this total or in it’s first year of release), which, in either case, I would highly doubt even covers Oprah’s part in the film. I would note that Rebecca apparently also negotiated a donation to the foundation from the film’s production.
Whoa!! Right?! There’s of course a lot of info online about drama surrounding the family, the book etc. but I don’t feel like either took particular advantage over the family if all of these numbers land in a rough ball-park.
So, what happened to the Science and Politics? Well, according to Science.org ‘the family of Henrietta Lacks settled its lawsuit against the huge biotechnology company Thermo Fisher Scientific over its claim that the company had been “unjustly enriched” by its use of her cells’ in August of 2023. No financial details but a huge win for them I hope! Henrietta’s oldest son, and last surviving child, Lawrence passed soon after in Sept 2023 at the age of 88.
According to BiologyInsights.com “In 2013, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) reached an agreement with the Lacks family following public discourse and HeLa genome sequencing. This agreement requires NIH-funded scientists to obtain permission to use Henrietta Lacks’ genetic information, with a committee including Lacks family members reviewing requests. The case also influenced the Common Rule, U.S. federal regulations for human subjects research, leading to 2017 revisions emphasizing clear informed consent.”
TechnologyNetworks.com also lists “HeLa cells played a vital role in characterizing SARS-CoV-2 at the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using HeLa cells, researchers were able to confirm the receptor used by the virus to infect host cells, aiding in the initial identification of drugs and vaccines to treat and prevent infection. HeLa cells continued to play a role throughout the pandemic and were even used as part of the initial development of mRNA vaccines against SARS-CoV-2.”
Rebecca Skloot ironically and unknowingly references this in her book (published 10 years prior to covid) “In 2006 an NIH researcher gave thousands of tissue samples to the pharmaceutical company Pfizer in exchange for about half a million dollars”
Oh my gosh, I spent a FULL morning looking into all of this and oh goodness!
*Teaser… I want you to be able to read this book too! (Maybe you can next weekend!)
-Anna R.
Are there any other non-fiction books that really opened your eyes to issues you had no idea about??
*As always if you purchase through any of the links in this post, or throughout this blog, a small commission comes back to help support the page & what I do here!
Kindle & Audible: US or CA
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