The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

Henrietta Lacks, a mother of five in Clover, Virginia, was the wife of a poor tobacco farmer and a black woman in the South at a time when blacks were treated in hospitals' "colored" wards and forced to use separate restrooms. She had something else also working against her -- incredibly aggressive cervical cancer cells.

Treated at Johns Hopkins hospital in Baltimore, Lacks died at age 31 in 1951. But first, her doctor took a biopsy and, more significantly, cultured the cells without Lacks' permission, without her knowledge and, without even his own realization of the way they would alter history.

Unlike other cells that medical researchers had been unable to study as successfully, Lacks' were incredibly aggressive and resilient, reproducing to the extent that ultimately they contaminated other research. Along the way, though, Lacks' cells, called HeLa by researchers, traveled to laboratories around the country, the world and outer space. They have played a role in an immense range of medical history -- from the development of the polio vaccine; treatments for Parkinson's disease, leukemia and AIDS; and advancements in in-vitro fertilization and gene mapping.

Yet Henrietta Lacks' own family, including a daughter named Deborah who was only a baby when Henrietta died, did not know until 1973 that her cells had even been saved, much less that they had been the subject of so much research. Nor did they know that people had sometimes made money off the cells, though Lacks' relatives -- too poor to afford health insurance -- were never paid a dime.

To author Rebecca Skloot's credit, she has established the Henrietta Lacks Foundation -- www.henriettalacksfoundation.org -- to help needy people who, the website says, "have made important contributions to scientific research without personally benefitting from those contributions ... particularly those used in research without their knowledge or consent."

At times, Skloot's writing gets a bit scientific and tedious for the lay reader. Mostly, though, it is an easy yet important and moving read. It is hard to read this book without getting angry at the racism that permeated scientific research far into the 20th century.

Skloot addresses the ethical issues involved in medical research without a person's knowledge -- a subject far less clear-cut than one might think. Skloot does not advocate either side of the issue, and even Deborah is grateful that her mother's cells have helped save lives. Skloot does, however, advocate for the memory of Lacks and for Lacks' family, especially Deborah who did not live to see the book published.