Book Log 2017 #34: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

Henrietta Lacks is one of the most important people in medical history, though not as a doctor (or any other sort of medical professional). A farmer struck with an incredibly aggressive ovarian cancer, the cells taken from her were found to be especially amenable to growing in a lab environment, and quickly became the cells to use for all sorts of experimentation. They were sold by the billions, used to develop medial milestones from the polio vaccine to in vitro fertilization.

And for all of this, Lacks received nothing. She died without any knowledge of what her cells would become, and without any compensation for her or her descendants.

As much as this book is about Henrietta and her story, it's also about how she's been erased (or never written into) the history of her cell line, while doctors who developed it and used it to find therapies have. It's also about her family, who have learned more about her story, but still have many gaps to fill (and misinformation to weed out). The underlying themes of race and class carry throughout, with poorer African-Americans marginalized by a largely white (and wealthy) medical establishment.

While reading this I thought quite a bit about the book One Blood which tells the story of Charles Drew, the African-American doctor who figured out how to separate blood plasma from whole blood, and the urban legend that he died after an accident because he couldn't get a transfusion at a whites only hospital. Both books shed great light on aspects of medical history and how African-Americans are treated within that history. I highly recommend reading both of them.