What We're Listening To: Abby

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. Random House Audiobooks, 2010. Unabridged on 10 discs, 12.5 hrs. Audiobook performed by Cassandra Campbell & Bahni Turpin.

HeLa cells were the first cells scientists were able to keep alive in petri dishes in the lab. More importantly they thrived and reproduced at unimaginable rates and became the "first immortal human cells ever grown in a laboratory." HeLa cells have been used to study the polio vaccine, chemotherapy drugs, Aids medicines and spawned what is now a huge multi-billion dollar biomedical industry. But where did they come from? Rebecca Skloot spent many years researching the human story as well as the clinical story of the HeLa cells.

The human story is the story of Henrietta Lacks, a poor black mother of five with a virulent form of cervical cancer who's surgeon removed some of her cancer cells, without her knowledge, shortly before her death in 1951. It is the story of segregated Baltimore in the 1950's and segregated Johns Hopkins Hospital as well. It is a time when patients were told very little about their diseases and left to suffer through what were the accepted treatments for the time but now seem horrific and cruel. It is the story of Henrietta's children and what became of them after their mother's death and how they came to learn that their mother's cells were living and reproducing in labs all around the world. (This information was both exciting and terrifying to them.)

Though many have benefited both professionally and monetarily from the HeLa cells none of that ever trickled down to Henrietta's family. Henrietta is buried in an unmarked grave on the family tobacco farm in Virginia and her daughter Deborah, who never knew her mother, was saddled with the burden of trying to uncover and understand what her mother's cells were being used for.

In most cases scientists never know the person their specimens come from but that is the beauty of this book. This books brings humanity to the story of the miraculous HeLa cells.