The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Rebecca Skloot tells the story of Henrietta Lacks, whose cancer cells were taken without her informed consent in 1951 and became one of medicine’s most important research tools. The book follows the scientific impact of HeLa cells alongside the lives of Lacks’s family, who remained largely unaware of what had been done. It is both biography and medical history, confronting race, consent, ownership, research ethics, and the human life behind a famous cell line.