Review of 'The Immortal life of Henrietta Lacks' on 'Goodreads'
1 star
this book is apparently inaccurate
618 pages
English language
Published Nov. 7, 2011 by Large Print Press/Gale Cengage Learning.
The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks
Rebecca Skloot: The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks (2011, Large Print Press/Gale Cengage Learning)
- ISBN:
- 978-1-59413-432-6
- OCLC Number:
- 666220228
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4 stars
(16 reviews)
Documents the story of how scientists took cells from an unsuspecting descendant of freed slaves and created a human cell line that has been kept alive indefinitely, enabling discoveries in such areas as cancer research, in vitro fertilization, and gene mapping.
Review of 'The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
The topic is fascinating. If only the author could confine herself to the topic of medical ethics and stay there, not to bring out a completely unrelated family drama.
Review of 'The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
A fascinating book about the history of the woman from whom HeLa cells are descended, the lives of her family and the ways in which the two stories have intertwined. I took a long time to get round to reading this, struggling to see how an entire book on the topic could be interesting. However, Skloot does a great job of drawing the characters of each of Lacks' family members and empathising with their position in understanding and gaining identity from their ancestor's unwitting role in modern medicine and human biology. A proper page-turner too!
Review of 'The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
Immortal Life is an excellent study of the human faces behind the world of bioresearch and patent research using human genes. Rebecca Skloot traces the history of He-La, the cells that will not die, and becomes part of the world of the family Henrietta left behind. Her meticulous research reveals the injustice of the segregated wards of John Hopkins and the motivations of early cell researchers who sought not personal profit but scientific advancement. The book raises important questions about who should gain from these bio products and how a market in human genetics can inhibit as well as encourage science. The singular achievement of Skloot's work, though, is the portrait of the Lacks family as she breaches the barriers of their anger and gains their trust. Immortal Life is as much a study of how our society has treated those who are powerless as it is a treatise on …
Immortal Life is an excellent study of the human faces behind the world of bioresearch and patent research using human genes. Rebecca Skloot traces the history of He-La, the cells that will not die, and becomes part of the world of the family Henrietta left behind. Her meticulous research reveals the injustice of the segregated wards of John Hopkins and the motivations of early cell researchers who sought not personal profit but scientific advancement. The book raises important questions about who should gain from these bio products and how a market in human genetics can inhibit as well as encourage science. The singular achievement of Skloot's work, though, is the portrait of the Lacks family as she breaches the barriers of their anger and gains their trust. Immortal Life is as much a study of how our society has treated those who are powerless as it is a treatise on a perpetually-multiplying cluster of cells.
Subjects
- Cancer
- Cell culture
- Research
- Patients
- Health
- HeLa cells
- African American women
- Medical ethics
- Human experimentation in medicine
- Biography
- History
Places
- United States
- Virginia