The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
by Rebecca Skloot · first published 2009
63% recommend37% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Narrative nonfiction about the woman whose cells became the HeLa line, weaving science, medical ethics and her family's story. It is fascinating and accessible for readers without a biology background.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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, in vitro fertilization, 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 New York Times bestseller takes readers on an extraordinary journey, from the “colored” ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s to stark white laborat
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I don't know about a sci-fi story, but the non-fiction book, "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot is friggin amazing.
on “Immortal cells of Henrietta Lacks” ↗It's terribly sad this is on "Today I found out." I learned about HeLa cells in high school biology, and the story really stuck with me. But when I took The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks out of the library (published this year, and an incredible book up for many awards) my public health faculty SO had never heard of her or the cells. The contribution of HeLa cells to modern biology is…
on “Woman with Immortal Cells” ↗The book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks just came out recently. Amazon picked it as their book of the year. My girlfriend, a bio-molecular & chemical engineer, just read it and said it was fantastic. http://www.amazon.com/Immortal-Life-Henrietta-Lacks/dp/14000...
on “Woman with Immortal Cells” ↗For the interested, I can highly recommend "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" - http://www.amazon.com/The-Immortal-Life-Henrietta-Lacks/dp/1...
on “Can a Jellyfish Unlock the Secret of Immortality?” ↗…human-animal hybrids capable of human-level intelligence, and how the world deals with life when Man plays god. Another excellent book on the ethics of bio-engineering and patentability is the true story, "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks."[2] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_(novel) [2] http://www.amazon.com/The-Immortal-Life-Henrietta-Lacks/dp/1...
on “Supreme Court: Natural Isolated DNA Not Patentable, Synthetic DNA Is [pdf]” ↗That is the name of Rebecca Skloot's excellent book on the subject: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Immortal_Life_of_Henrietta...)
on “How cancer was created by evolution” ↗consider the lobster The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks cryptonomicon The hunt for Vulcan: and how Albert Einstein destroyed a planet
on “What are the best books you read in 2017?” ↗I have been reading 'The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks' by Rebecca Skloot. It's a fascinating read on how loose the ethics were when experimenting with African Americans back then. This book also makes me wonder about the current practices, which we do…
on “Ask HN: What are you reading?” ↗…Controversy Darwin's Ghosts: In Search of the First Evolutionists The Dinosaur Hunters: A True Story of Scientific Rivalry and the Discovery of the Prehistoric World Chasing Venus: The Race to Measure the Heavens The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Hidden Figures Prometheans in the Lab: Chemistry and the Making of the Modern World Fixing My Gaze: A Scientist's Journey into Seeing in Three Dimensions The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History Knocking…
on “Ask HN: What are your favorite non-fiction books of all time?” ↗If anyone is curious about her life and contributions to science, I'd pick up a copy of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (https://amzn.to/2rLLIHU). It touches on some pretty heavy sociological issues as well.
on “Henrietta Lacks' Lasting Impact Detailed in New Portrait” ↗I read "The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks" a few years ago, really fascinating book. Highly recommend it.
on “Henrietta Lacks” ↗> I'm looking for something a little meaty to keep the brain working... - The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks comes to mind. I had no idea how rampant purposeful discrimination was so recently for example, but the point of the book is the HeLa cells - and biology is also not my forté so loads of new information…
on “Ask HN: What are you reading?” ↗The exact reason for this is actually very well detailed in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, which was published this year. For one, one man did, but he was a con artist that made the family hesitant to ever talk to anyone again. When Rebecca Skoot went to interview the family for the book,…
on “Woman with Immortal Cells” ↗The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks: It's the history of the first lab-grown human cells, _kind of_ stolen (it was normal at the times) from a black woman who died from cancer, her family had never really heard or learned what the science…
on “Ask HN: Summer reading” ↗…science books that are written by respected scientists - Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker, Stephen Hawking - as well as books that are effective summaries of accepted information by laypeople, such as The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot (which interweaves the history with first-person narrative of the author's interactions with Lacks's living relatives) or The Big Bang by Simon Singh. There's also lots of blogs written…
on “Proust Wasn’t a Neuroscientist. Neither was Jonah Lehrer” ↗