The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Part biography of Henrietta Lacks and her family. Part explanation of the contribution the cells taken from her have had on medicine. Part memoir of Rebecca on the challenges brought in even getting to write this story. It jumps around quite a bit as it bounds around each of the three parts.
What the Lackses went through depressed me. The callousness of Johns Hopkins does not really surprise me. The enormity of what science was able to accomplish was amazing. But the scientific misunderstandings the family suffered through, to me, is the worst part. For example, Rebecca helped Henrietta’s daughter understand cloned cells is not the same thing as cloning Dolly the sheep, so she would not see her mother wandering all over London.
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