I actually finished up reading this a couple of weeks ago, but just now am getting around to posting about it!
Despite the fact that this is a nonfiction book, AND despite the fact that a lot of the book covers information on cellular culture techniques and the development of laboratory procedures to develop cells in culture, I could NOT put this book down.
The basic story line is that a young black woman was treated at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore in 1951 for an advanced-stage cervical cancer, which ultimately killed her at the young age of 31. She left behind a husband and a family of small children. While at Johns Hopkins for treatment, including surgery, two cell samples - one of healthy tissue and one of the cervical cancer cells/tumor - were removed. The cervical cancer cells became the basis for the culture medium now known as the HeLa cell line. This was the first culture cell line to be successfully grown in a laboratory for any length of time, and which formed the basis for literally thousands of studies which required a cell growth medium (including the polio vaccine, AIDS research, diabetes, cancer, tuberculosis - on and on). These cells actually are still being used as a growth medium in many laboratories worldwide.
The second portion of the story is one that touches on not only race relations, but also patient/doctor relationships and how those things have changed in the ensuing 70 years. Henrietta Lacks was a poor, mostly uneducated African-American woman in 1951. Her doctors apparently told her very little (or at least she understood very little) about what her diagnosis was, the severity of it, the treatment, or the mortality rate. She also did not apparently consent to allow tissue samples to be taken, nor to be used for scientific research. While being kept in the dark was probably a combination of her being a woman AND being an African-American, this wasn't a time in medical history where doctors had to really share any information with the patient. The book explores some of the fall-out of this with Henrietta's children, who had a tough childhood (and most of them a tough adult-hood as well).
Should her children have benefitted financially from the world's most prolifically used cell culture medium? They didn't in any way (although neither did the doctor who originally was able to culture the cells in his laboratory - he sent most of them out into the world for free to be used for research). Certainly the cells are worth millions of dollars over those years - not just from a culture medium standpoint, but from the medical treatments developed from their use.
I found this a completely engrossing read. I will admit to a more involved interest than perhaps the average reader with regards to the topic, but I did find the book well-written and one I would find myself reading again. I didn't find the amount of science, as it was presented, to be off-putting, although this is definitely not a "lite read". The author tries very hard not to point fingers particularly at one side or another, and does definitively address the fact that this was a different time in history for doctor/patient relationships than we have now, although she spent many hours (years!) interviewing Henrietta's children and had a personal relationship in particular with her youngest daughter. I thoroughly enjoyed this one!
All for now....
