The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

      Henrietta Lacks was a life-loving young woman in the 1930s who loved going to dance clubs at night and being with friends. There was one thing that was stopping her from living a normal life: Henrietta Lacks was living with cancer. I read the book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. It is a very interesting book about a young African American woman named Henrietta Lacks who had cervical cancer. During her operation to get her tumor out, a doctor named George Gey took some cells from her tumor without her or her family's permission and put them in his lab. Unlike most cell samples, her's reproduced at an enormous rate and are still reproducing today. Her cells were shipped to labs all around the world and were used to make many vaccinations, to find out the effects on bombs, and for cloning. Many scientists were making a lot of money on Henrietta's immortal cells which were known as HeLa cells but her family got nothing. Scientists didn't want people to know who the owner of the HeLa cells were so they gave the media names like Helen Lane or Helen Larson so no one would find out who's cells they really were. But her family eventually found out. I liked reading this book because it is totally true to life and it wasn't only about the HeLa cells but also about Henrietta Lacks and the Lacks family so I definitely recommend this book.

Henrietta Lacks