The recap
In 1951 a young Black mother named Henrietta Lacks was treated for cervical cancer at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. Doctors kept a sample of her tumour without asking her, and her cells did something no human cells had done before: they went on dividing in the lab, generation after generation. Known as HeLa, they became one of the most important tools in modern medicine, used in research on vaccines, cancer, genetics and far more. Her family, meanwhile, learned almost nothing about it for decades. Rebecca Skloot spent years earning the trust of the Lacks family, above all Henrietta's daughter Deborah, and her book braids three stories together: the science of the cells, the life of the woman behind them, and the reporting journey itself. The result is a gripping piece of medical history that keeps asking difficult questions about consent, race, money and who gets to own a piece of the human body.
Why read it
For readers who love narrative non-fiction that moves like a novel, and anyone curious about the human stories hidden behind medical breakthroughs.
Fun facts
- 01
Skloot first heard Henrietta Lacks's name at 16 in a basic biology class, and the book ended up taking her more than a decade to research and write.
- 02
HBO adapted the book as a 2017 film directed by George C. Wolfe, starring Oprah Winfrey as Deborah Lacks and Rose Byrne as Rebecca Skloot.
- 03
Skloot set up the Henrietta Lacks Foundation, funded partly by the book's proceeds; its first grants in 2010 paid college scholarships for Lacks descendants.
- 04
In 2013 the US National Institutes of Health reached an agreement with the Lacks family that gave two relatives seats on a panel reviewing requests to use HeLa genome data.
