City of Belmont - Ruth Faulkner Public Library

The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot

eng

individual biography

platesportraitsillustrations

no index present

non fiction

The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks

Rebecca Skloot

“Her name was Henrietta Lacks but scientists know her as HeLa. A poor black tobacco farmer, her cancer cells – taken without her knowledge – became a multimillion dollar industry and one of the most important tools in medicine. Yet Henrietta’s family did not learn of her ‘immortaility’ until more than twenty years after her death, with devastating consequences … Rebecca Skloot’s fascinating account is the story of the life, and afterlife of one woman who changed the medical world forever. Balancing the beauty and drama of scientific discovery with dark questions who owns the stuff our bodies are made of, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is an extraordinary journey in search of the soul and story of a real woman, whose cells live on today in all corners of the world.”--Back cover