… one of the most graceful and moving nonfiction books I’ve read in a very long time … Ms. Skloot, a young science journalist and an indefatigable researcher, writes about Henrietta Lacks and her impact on modern medicine from almost every conceivable angle and manages to make all of them fascinating … Ms. Skloot writes with particular sensitivity and grace about the history of race and medicine in America…[and] makes it abundantly clear why, when Henrietta Lacks’s family learned that her cells were still living, the images that ran through their minds were straight out of science-fiction horror movies … The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is also, from first page to last, a meditation on medical ethics — on the notion of informed consent, and on the issue of who owns human cells. When they’re in your body, it’s obvious — they’re yours. But once they’ve been removed? All bets are clearly off.
Immortal Life reads like a novel. The prose is unadorned, crisp and transparent. Skloot frequently glides into section and chapter breaks with thought-provoking quotations from interview subjects. This technique sometimes lets well-meaning scientists demonstrate through naivete how easy it is to objectify human research subjects … This book, labeled ‘science - cultural studies,’ should be treated as a work of American history. It's a deftly crafted investigation of a social wrong committed by the medical establishment, as well as the scientific and medical miracles to which it led. Skloot's compassionate account can be the first step toward recognition, justice and healing.
Besides being about Henrietta, this book also serves as a biography of her cells and the discoveries they made possible...Skloot then skillfully weaves in the story of the Lacks family and their abominable treatment by medical researchers … Skloot’s persistence pays off as it is her presentation of the family and their perspective that lifts this book above science and turns it into an inspiring story, full of poignancy and humanity … It is a well-written, carefully-researched, complex saga of medical research, bioethics, and race in America. Above all it is a human story of redemption for a family, torn by loss, and for a writer with a vision that would not let go.
Rebecca Skloot introduces us to the ‘real live woman,’ the children who survived her, and the interplay of race, poverty, science and one of the most important medical discoveries of the last 100 years. Skloot narrates the science lucidly, tracks the racial politics of medicine thoughtfully and tells the Lacks family’s often painful history with grace … Science writing is often just about ‘the facts.’ Skloot’s book, her first, is far deeper, braver and more wonderful … She tacks between the perspective of the scientists and the family evenly and fairly … The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is much more than a portrait of the Lacks family. It is also a critique of science that insists on ignoring the messy human provenance of its materials.
The alienation of labor no longer shocks the way it did in the nineteenth century—we accept without surprise that our employers generally own the rights to the fruits of our work—but the alienation of our own bodies still does. It is this sense of violation, of theft, that animates Lacks’ sons Lawrence and Sonny in their fruitless quest for compensation from Johns Hopkins, and that accounts for much of the energy in Skloot’s narrative … The race question is the most compelling component of the book, but it is also the most misleading … The story of HeLa and of Henrietta Lacks is not simple, and Skloot struggles in places with order and chronology and plot line, and sometimes confuses irony with argumentation. Where she succeeds magnificently is in her depiction of the Lacks family.
The HeLa story has been told before, in books, magazine articles and documentaries, but no one got as close to the Lacks family as Skloot did. Her book was a decade in the making, and it's clear why: It took that long to win the trust of people who, with reason, felt betrayed by the medical establishment … That story is a stew of race, class, medical paternalism, well-meaning if blinkered researchers and changing rules governing patient privacy. Skloot lays out the multiple ethical problems arising from HeLa as clearly as she describes the scientific triumphs Lacks' cells made possible … Her book not only restores Lacks' humanity but appears to have brought a measure of peace to her troubled family. It's as much an act of justice as one of journalism.
