![]() Henriettas family did not learn of her immortality until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists investigating HeLa began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS PDF EBOOK FULLNow Rebecca Skloot takes us on an extraordinary journey, from the colored ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s to stark white laboratories with freezers full of HeLa cells from Henriettas small, dying hometown of Clover, Virginia a land of wooden slave quarters, faith healings, and voodoo to East Baltimore today, where her children and grandchildren live and struggle with the legacy of her cells. Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave. ![]() HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bombs effects helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping and have been bought and sold by the billions. If you could pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, theyd weigh more than 50 million metric tonsas much as a hundred Empire State Buildings. The first immortal human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cellstaken without her knowledgebecame one of the most important tools in medicine. Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. Winner of BookBrowse's 2010 Best Book Award ![]()
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