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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丽贝卡•思科鲁特（Rebecca Skloot），美国科学作家，曾任美国国家公共电台（NPR）《电台实验室》节目和美国公共广播公司（PBS）《科学新星》节目记者，《大众科学》杂志特约编辑。她先后获得生物学学士学位和非虚构创造性写作硕士学位，曾任美国国家图书评论协会（National Book Critics Circle）副主席，在孟菲斯大学、匹兹堡大学、纽约大学等校教授写作课程。《永生的海拉》是她的处女作，出版后旋即登上《纽约时报》和亚马逊畅销榜第一名。
丽贝卡•思科鲁特（Rebecca Skloot），美国科学作家，曾任美国国家公共电台（NPR）《电台实验室》节目和美国公共广播公司（PBS）《科学新星》节目记者，《大众科学》杂志特约编辑。她先后获得生物学学士学位和非虚构创造性写作硕士学位，曾任美国国家图书评论协会（National Book Critics Circle）副主席，在孟菲斯大学、匹兹堡大学、纽约大学等校教授写作课程。《永生的海拉》是她的处女作，出版后旋即登上《纽约时报》和亚马逊畅销榜第一名。
Zakariyya stopped drinking and began studying the lives of yogis and others who'd achieved inner peace. He started spending more time with his family, including his many nieces and nephews, who hug and kiss him on a regular basis. He smiles often. (查看原文)
丽贝卡·思科鲁特 作者
阿米多特.
广西师范大学出版社2018版
胡大头烤全羊
江苏文艺出版社2012版
风流五百生
Crown Publishing Group2010版
0 有用 lEeeee 2022-11-27 16:51:15 浙江
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