The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

First, this book is not really in my normal range of reading. I do read non fiction, usually history or an occasional biography. This book is heavily weighted in the area of science which was always one of my absolute worst subjects in school. However, it was worth every minute of reading.

Henrietta Lacks was unknowingly one of the biggest contributors to medical research in the world. In 1951 she was diagnosed with cervical cancer, she underwent treatment at John Hopkins hospital in Baltimore and did not know at the time that the cells taken from her cervix were going to be used for research. She was an African American women from a family with not a lot of means and she died within months of her treatment. Her cells became known within the science community as HeLa cells. Unlike other cells that were being researched that would die within days, hers multiplied at an insanely high rate. No one in her family knew about this until decades later when her personal information was divulged and they were bombarded by the press.

HeLa cells are still around today and have been used for almost 50 years in research and development of many drugs and treatments. I'm sure at one point in my life, I've probably been injected with a vaccine that had her cells in it. This book is the amazing story of how this happened, the effect on her family and the medical community. It is a pretty technical book but I was easily able to understand the complexity's of the science. That is pretty much a miracle in itself which gives credit to a great author.