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.
白人作者的ego太大了，特别在看完playing in the dark以后，再看白人写黑人会很敏感地察觉到那种backgrounded的意图。这种nonfiction能不能稍微收收别老写自己了，我真的不想知道你找资料找相关的人脉有多困难，好好讲对方的故事不好吗🙏抛开上面的种族问题，也不是很喜欢这种写法，对于相关人士生活的大篇幅描写给我一种知音的感觉。感觉不如写成访谈录，听听她们自己的声音。别老惦...白人作者的ego太大了，特别在看完playing in the dark以后，再看白人写黑人会很敏感地察觉到那种backgrounded的意图。这种nonfiction能不能稍微收收别老写自己了，我真的不想知道你找资料找相关的人脉有多困难，好好讲对方的故事不好吗🙏抛开上面的种族问题，也不是很喜欢这种写法，对于相关人士生活的大篇幅描写给我一种知音的感觉。感觉不如写成访谈录，听听她们自己的声音。别老惦记写自己打电话怎么怎么徒劳无功，人家怎么怎么不回应你了，有一半的篇幅全是这样水出来的。不如把几次法庭相关的事件写详细点，算作一个医学伦理和相关法律的科普，整体看下来真的非常失望(展开)
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0 有用 静卜 2020-03-01 17:42:52
行文特别流畅自然，可读性非常强。我感动的点可能跑偏了，在此时此刻我所处的社会语境之下，我格外珍惜这种价值观：一个个体的故事值得被讲述、个人的意愿值得被尊重、个体的历史值得被记录。
0 有用 影沫 2010-09-06 13:41:55
就这样吧…拜拜了，SUMMER READING
0 有用 潜入深水的鬼魂 2011-07-24 19:23:39
写的很好，引人深思。
0 有用 Jacintta H 2018-09-08 11:17:05
It’s so good! So well written!
0 有用 庄常飞 2013-06-07 22:59:56
如果是杂志文章，冲击力会大得多，不过已经很好了
0 有用 Amber 2024-11-17 21:36:08 重庆
作者「既要…又要…还要…」，最后成书就是一锅乱炖，多好的题材，浪费了。
0 有用 莞尔和丸子 2024-10-07 18:42:58 浙江
整本书一半是Henrietta和她家人们的故事，一半是关于cell的科普知识。这样的写法对非专业人士还是很友好的。结合相关的时间线和人物图读起来会比较省力。作者花了比较多篇幅描述她是如何通过漫长的时间赢得这一家人的信任，才慢慢揭开Henrietta lacks的神秘面纱，这个永生细胞背后的默默无闻的女性。两条线交织，从九几年到2000年初，这些失去母亲的孩子们遭受的一切，而同时immortal c... 整本书一半是Henrietta和她家人们的故事，一半是关于cell的科普知识。这样的写法对非专业人士还是很友好的。结合相关的时间线和人物图读起来会比较省力。作者花了比较多篇幅描述她是如何通过漫长的时间赢得这一家人的信任，才慢慢揭开Henrietta lacks的神秘面纱，这个永生细胞背后的默默无闻的女性。两条线交织，从九几年到2000年初，这些失去母亲的孩子们遭受的一切，而同时immortal cells则在科学届大放异彩，拯救了无数人的生命同时也让很多人赚的钵满，这形成了鲜明的对比，也极尽讽刺。在书里看到了那些科学怪人们的全身心投入尤其是让人印象深刻的gey，也了解了细胞的皮毛。医学的进步都是踩着无数白骨，感恩我们生活在现代，感恩曾经无数默默无闻的人们。 (展开)
0 有用 - 2024-08-19 19:33:26 上海
白人作者的ego太大了，特别在看完playing in the dark以后，再看白人写黑人会很敏感地察觉到那种backgrounded的意图。这种nonfiction能不能稍微收收别老写自己了，我真的不想知道你找资料找相关的人脉有多困难，好好讲对方的故事不好吗🙏抛开上面的种族问题，也不是很喜欢这种写法，对于相关人士生活的大篇幅描写给我一种知音的感觉。感觉不如写成访谈录，听听她们自己的声音。别老惦... 白人作者的ego太大了，特别在看完playing in the dark以后，再看白人写黑人会很敏感地察觉到那种backgrounded的意图。这种nonfiction能不能稍微收收别老写自己了，我真的不想知道你找资料找相关的人脉有多困难，好好讲对方的故事不好吗🙏抛开上面的种族问题，也不是很喜欢这种写法，对于相关人士生活的大篇幅描写给我一种知音的感觉。感觉不如写成访谈录，听听她们自己的声音。别老惦记写自己打电话怎么怎么徒劳无功，人家怎么怎么不回应你了，有一半的篇幅全是这样水出来的。不如把几次法庭相关的事件写详细点，算作一个医学伦理和相关法律的科普，整体看下来真的非常失望 (展开)
0 有用 bagins 2024-07-23 10:45:10 上海
听
0 有用 Salliiiii 2024-05-27 05:28:31 英国
很有趣的科学与人文的碰撞。hela细胞的出现让平凡的lacks一家站在了聚光灯下。未受过良好教育的他们试图以他们的方式去了解hela细胞，并挣扎着希望获得应有的名誉。书中有很多很dramatic的情节，但我一直在提醒自己这是non-fiction，尤其是911那个细节尤其震惊。