 First edition | |
| Author | Rebecca Skloot |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Nonfiction |
| Publisher | Crown |
Publication date | February 2, 2010 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback) |
| Pages | 381 |
| ISBN | 978-1-4000-5217-2 |
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (2010) is a non-fiction book by American author Rebecca Skloot. It was the 2011 winner of the National Academies Communication Award for best creative work that helps the public understanding of topics in science, engineering or medicine.
The book is about Henrietta Lacks and the immortal cell line, known as HeLa, that came from Lacks's cervical cancer cells in 1951. Skloot became interested in Lacks after a biology teacher referenced her but knew little about her. Skloot began conducting extensive research on her and worked with Lacks' family to create the book. The book is notable for its science writing and dealing with ethical issues of race and class in medical research. Skloot said that some of the information was taken from the journal of Deborah Lacks, Henrietta Lacks's daughter, as well as from "archival photos and documents, scientific and historical research." It is Skloot's first book. [1]
The book was initially released in hardcover, published by Crown, on February 2, 2010 ( ISBN 978-1-4000-5217-2). On the same date, an audiobook edition was published by Random House Audio, narrated by Casandra Campbell and Bahni Turpin ( ISBN 978-0-307-71250-9), as well as electronic editions in mobile (Kindle) and EPUB formats. A paperback edition was published by Broadway Books on March 8, 2011 ( ISBN 978-1-4000-5218-9). It has also been translated into more than 25 foreign language editions. [2]
The book was awarded the National Academies Best Book of the Year Award, [3] the American Association for the Advancement of Science's Young Adult Science Book award, [4] and the Wellcome Trust Book Prize, awarded annually to an outstanding work of fiction or non-fiction on the theme of health and medicine. [5] It also won the Heartland Prize for non-fiction, [6] among others, including a Salon Book Award, and a 100 New York Times Notable Books of the Year. The paperback edition had spent 75 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list. [7]
Critical reception was largely favorable. It was named a best book of the year by more than 60 media outlets, including New York Times , Oprah , NPR , and Entertainment Weekly . [8] [ promotional source? ] Lisa Margonelli reviewing in The New York Times Book Review said:
Skloot narrates the science lucidly, tracks the racial politics of medicine thoughtfully and tells the Lacks family’s often painful history with grace. She also confronts the spookiness of the cells themselves, intrepidly crossing into the spiritual plane on which the family has come to understand their mother’s continued presence in the world. Science writing is often just about “the facts.” Skloot’s book, her first, is far deeper, braver and more wonderful. [9]
Dwight Garner of The New York Times wrote:
I put down Rebecca Skloot’s first book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, more than once. Ten times, probably. Once to poke the fire. Once to silence a pinging BlackBerry. And eight times to chase my wife and assorted visitors around the house, to tell them I was holding one of the most graceful and moving nonfiction books I’ve read in a very long time …It has brains and pacing and nerve and heart. [10]
One reviewer for The New Atlantis , while mostly positive about the book, questioned its ethical arguments about tissue markets and informed consent involving scientists such as Chester M. Southam, and claimed to have found factual errors: one related to the role of HeLa cells in early space missions, and, another related to a statement in the book that says "if all HeLa cells ever grown could have been gathered on a scale, their total weight would have measured more than 50 million metric tons." [11] Skloot addresses this question on her website, where she explains how the 50 million metric tons figure was calculated, saying "That calculation was based on the way HeLa cells are known to divide (specifically how often they double their numbers) and the amount of time they’d been alive at the time the calculation was made." She clarifies that "it was a hypothetical calculation because that many cells couldn’t have been saved and put on a scale." She also says that the figures "were verified before the book went to press by the scientists who did the original calculations, and outside experts." [12]
The book was adopted as a common reading text at more than 125 universities and was widely taught in high school, undergraduate, graduate and doctoral classrooms. [8] [ promotional source? ]
In September 2015, schools in Knox County, Tennessee were faced with demands from a parent that the book be removed from Knox County classrooms and libraries; the parent in question alleged that the scene in which Lacks discovered her tumor was depicted in a "pornographic" way. [13]
In 2010, it was announced that a television film project based on the book was in development. Oprah Winfrey and Alan Ball were teaming together to bring the biopic to HBO. [14] HBO began production on the film in the summer of 2016. Winfrey executive-produced and starred as Deborah, the daughter of Henrietta Lacks. [15] George C. Wolfe wrote the screenplay and directed the film. Lacks' sons and granddaughter were planned to serve as consultants. [16] The film aired in 2017.
Jonathan Earl Franzen is an American novelist and essayist. His 2001 novel The Corrections, a sprawling, satirical family drama, drew widespread critical acclaim, earned Franzen a National Book Award, was a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction finalist, earned a James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and was shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award. His novel Freedom (2010) garnered similar praise and led to an appearance on the cover of Time magazine alongside the headline "Great American Novelist". Franzen's latest novel Crossroads was published in 2021, and is the first in a projected trilogy.
Henrietta Lacks was an African-American woman whose cancer cells are the source of the HeLa cell line, the first immortalized human cell line and one of the most important cell lines in medical research. An immortalized cell line reproduces indefinitely under specific conditions, and the HeLa cell line continues to be a source of invaluable medical data to the present day.
HeLa is an immortalized cell line used in scientific research. It is the oldest human cell line and one of the most commonly used. HeLa cells are durable and prolific, allowing for extensive applications in scientific study. The line is derived from cervical cancer cells taken on 8 February 1951, from Henrietta Lacks, a 31-year-old African American mother of five, after whom the line is named. Lacks died of cancer on 4 October 1951.
Courtney Bernard Vance is an American actor. He started his career on stage before moving to film and television. Vance has received various accolades, including a Tony Award and two Primetime Emmy Awards, as well as nominations for a Grammy Award, Golden Globe Award, and Screen Actors Guild Award.
Renée Elise Goldsberry is an American actress and singer known for originating the role of Angelica Schuyler in the Broadway musical Hamilton, for which she won the 2016 Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical. Her other Broadway credits include Nettie Harris in the original Broadway cast of The Color Purple, and Mimi Marquez in Rent. She has portrayed many roles on television, including Geneva Pine on The Good Wife, and Evangeline Williamson on One Life to Live, for which she received two Daytime Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series. Since 2021, she has starred in the Netflix musical comedy Girls5eva. Also that year, she received a nomination for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Actress in a Supporting Role in a Limited Series or Movie for her performance in the Disney+ live stage recording of Hamilton, which was released in 2020.
Biological immortality is a state in which the rate of mortality from senescence is stable or decreasing, thus decoupling it from chronological age. Various unicellular and multicellular species, including some vertebrates, achieve this state either throughout their existence or after living long enough. A biologically immortal living being can still die from means other than senescence, such as through injury, poison, disease, predation, lack of available resources, or changes to environment.
Harpo Productions is an American multimedia production company founded by Oprah Winfrey and based in West Hollywood, California. The name "Harpo" is "Oprah" spelled backwards and it was also the name of her on-screen husband in the film The Color Purple (1985).
Adriane Lenox is an American actress, best known for her performances in Broadway theatre. Her performance in the play Doubt: A Parable garnered her the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play in 2005. She received another Tony Award nomination for After Midnight in 2014.
Moore v. Regents of the University of California was a landmark Supreme Court of California decision. Filed on July 9, 1990, it dealt with the issue of property rights to one's own cells taken in samples by doctors or researchers.
George Otto Gey was the cell biologist at Johns Hopkins Hospital who is credited with propagating the HeLa cell line from Henrietta Lacks' cervical tumor. He spent over 35 years developing numerous scientific breakthroughs under the Johns Hopkins Medical School and Hospital.
Rebecca L. Skloot is an American science writer who specializes in science and medicine. Her first book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (2010), was one of the best-selling new books of 2010, staying on The New York Times Bestseller list for over 6 years and eventually reaching #1. It was adapted into a movie by George C. Wolfe, which premiered on HBO on April 22, 2017, and starred Rose Byrne as Skloot, and Oprah Winfrey as Lacks's daughter Deborah.
Kadir Nelson is a Los Angeles–based painter, illustrator, and author who is best known for his paintings often featured on the covers of The New Yorker magazine, and album covers for Michael Jackson and Drake. His work is focused on African-American culture and history. The New York Times describes his work as: "sumptuous, deeply affecting work. Nelson’s paintings are drenched in ambience, and often overt symbolism. He has twice been a Caldecott honor recipient and won the 2020 Caldecott Medal for his book The Undefeated.
Oprah Gail Winfrey, also known mononymously as Oprah, is an American talk show host, television producer, actress, author, and media proprietor. She is best known for her talk show, The Oprah Winfrey Show, broadcast from Chicago, which ran in national syndication for 25 years, from 1986 to 2011. Dubbed the "Queen of All Media", she was the richest African-American of the 20th century and was once the world's only black billionaire. By 2007, she was often ranked as the most influential woman in the world.
The Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize is a literary prize created in 1988 by the newspaper The Chicago Tribune. It is awarded yearly in two categories: Fiction and Nonfiction. These prizes are awarded to books that "reinforce and perpetuate the values of heartland America."
Floyd Skloot is an American poet, novelist, and memoirist. Some of his work concerns his experience with neurological damage caused by a virus contracted in 1988.
Siddhartha Mukherjee is an Indian-American physician, biologist, and author. He is best known for his 2010 book, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, that won notable literary prizes including the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction, and Guardian First Book Award, among others. The book was listed in the "All-Time 100 Nonfiction Books" by Time magazine in 2011. His 2016 book The Gene: An Intimate History made it to #1 on The New York Times Best Seller list, and was among The New York Times 100 best books of 2016, and a finalist for the Wellcome Trust Prize and the Royal Society Prize for Science Books.
An immortalised cell line is a population of cells from a multicellular organism which would normally not proliferate indefinitely but, due to mutation, have evaded normal cellular senescence and instead can keep undergoing division. The cells can therefore be grown for prolonged periods in vitro. The mutations required for immortality can occur naturally or be intentionally induced for experimental purposes. Immortal cell lines are a very important tool for research into the biochemistry and cell biology of multicellular organisms. Immortalised cell lines have also found uses in biotechnology.
Lydia Dean Pilcher is an American film and television producer and director and founder of Cine Mosaic, a production company based in New York City.
Chester Milton Southam was an immunologist and oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Cornell University Medical College; he went to Thomas Jefferson University in 1971 and worked there until the end of his career. He ran many experiments involving the injection of live cancer cells into human subjects, without disclosing that they were cancer cells, and using subjects with questionable ability to consent, such as incarcerated people and senile patients in long-term care at a hospital. The New York State Attorney General encouraged the Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York to take away Southam's medical license. Regardless, he went on to be president of the American Association for Cancer Research. His work was labeled by both modern scientists and his contemporaries as highly dangerous and unethical.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a drama television film directed by George C. Wolfe and starring Oprah Winfrey and Rose Byrne. It is based on the book of the same name by Rebecca Skloot and documents the story of Henrietta Lacks, who was diagnosed with cervical cancer in the 1950s, and whose cancer cells would change the course of cancer treatment. The film premiered on HBO on April 22, 2017.
