Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. If y...
Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. If you could pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, they’d weigh more than 50 million metric tons—as much as a hundred Empire State Buildings. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb’s effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions.
Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave.
Now 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 Henrietta’s 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.
Henrietta’s 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. And though the cells had launched a multimillion-dollar industry that sells human biological materials, her family never saw any of the profits. As Rebecca Skloot so brilliantly shows, the story of the Lacks family—past and present—is inextricably connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of.
Over the decade it took to uncover this story, Rebecca became enmeshed in the lives of the Lacks family—especially Henrietta’s daughter Deborah, who was devastated to learn about her mother’s cells. She was consumed with questions: Had scientists cloned her mother? Did it hurt her when researchers infected her cells with viruses and shot them into space? What happened to her sister, Elsie, who died in a mental institution at the age of fifteen? And if her mother was so important to medicine, why couldn’t her children afford health insurance?
Intimate in feeling, astonishing in scope, and impossible to put down, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks captures the beauty and drama of scientific discovery, as well as its human consequences.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks的创作者
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Rebecca Skloot is an award winning science writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine; O, The Oprah Magazine; Discover; and many other publications. She specializes in narrative science writing and has explored a wide range of topics, including goldfish surgery, tissue ownership rights, race and medicine, food politics, and packs of wild dogs in Manhattan. Sh...
Rebecca Skloot is an award winning science writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine; O, The Oprah Magazine; Discover; and many other publications. She specializes in narrative science writing and has explored a wide range of topics, including goldfish surgery, tissue ownership rights, race and medicine, food politics, and packs of wild dogs in Manhattan. She has worked as a correspondent for WNYC’s Radiolab and PBS’s Nova ScienceNOW. She and her father, Floyd Skloot, are co-editors of The Best American Science Writing 2011 . You can read a selection of Rebecca Skloot's magazine writing on the Articles page of this site.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks , Skloot's debut book, took more than a decade to research and write, and instantly became a New York Times best-seller. She has been featured on numerous television shows, including CBS Sunday Morning, The Colbert Report, Fox Business News, and others, and was named One of Five Surprising Leaders of 2010 by the Washington Post. The Immortal Life was chosen as a best book of 2010 by more than 60 media outlets, including Entertainment Weekly, USA Today, O the Oprah Magazine, Los Angeles Times, National Public Radio, People Magazine, New York Times, and U.S. News and World Report; it was named The Best Book of 2010 by Amazon.com and a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers Pick. It has won numerous awards, including the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize for Nonfiction, the Wellcome Trust Book Prize, and two Goodreads Choice Awards for Best Nonfiction Book of the Year and Best Debut Author of the year. It has received widespread critical acclaim, with reviews appearing in The New Yorker, Washington Post, Science, and many others. Dwight Garner of the New York Times said, "I put down Rebecca Skloot's first book, "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks," more than once. Ten times, probably. Once to poke the fire. Once to silence a pinging BlackBerry. And eight times to chase my wife and assorted visitors around the house, to tell them I was holding one of the most graceful and moving nonfiction books I've read in a very long time …It has brains and pacing and nerve and heart.” See the press page of this site for more reactions to the book.
Share your story and join the conversation on the HeLa Forum.
丽贝卡·思科鲁特 作者
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1 有用 乎风骗毋知 2022-05-28 09:27:06
总体上挺失望的！但也有意想不到的收获。 失望在HeLa的故事讲得浮浅，没有太多信息量（当然也许本书定位就不是深度科普，但我本意是来读科普的啊）。 收获在Henrietta Lacks的故事与Henrietta Lacks家族的故事讲得悲戚无奈，一声叹息。 全书三条叙事线：➊HeLa的故事、➋Henrietta Lacks的故事、➌作者的采访故事。必须指出，我不太喜欢浓墨重彩、巨细靡遗、声泪俱... 总体上挺失望的！但也有意想不到的收获。 失望在HeLa的故事讲得浮浅，没有太多信息量（当然也许本书定位就不是深度科普，但我本意是来读科普的啊）。 收获在Henrietta Lacks的故事与Henrietta Lacks家族的故事讲得悲戚无奈，一声叹息。 全书三条叙事线：➊HeLa的故事、➋Henrietta Lacks的故事、➌作者的采访故事。必须指出，我不太喜欢浓墨重彩、巨细靡遗、声泪俱下的第3条叙事线，很不赞成作者把自己放在那么重要的位置，半本书都是“我我我”。 最感触的是：Henrietta的丈夫与儿子们主要努力在诉求经济赔偿；而她的女儿Deborah则一心想要让母亲的贡献（对科学、对人类）得到世人认同，以及寻求与母亲的情感联结，感人。 (展开)
0 有用 梅文女王殿下 2010-03-15 02:17:30
2010.3.13 FINISHED An interesting history for those who did not know about it.
0 有用 ING 2011-12-29 15:05:25
好！
1 有用 momo 2014-08-10 10:06:57
所谓科学类传记文学，中间穿插着学刊杂志上截取的片段，行文中不时流露作为白人的优越感。十年一书写成这样，不如回去写学科报告。
1 有用 薛定谔的毛 2020-05-24 10:05:43
作者太厉害了，为了写这本书读了那么多资料文献采访了那么多人，简直是个认真严谨的学者！可读性非常强的一本科普读物，每个生物医学口的人必读！从今以后要对HeLa温柔一点~