Now an HBO(R) Film starring Oprah Winfrey and Rose Byrne. 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.

New Author Ron Lacks, tells a behind the scenes story of what happened in the past 9 years to his family in his new book Henrietta Lacks The Untold Story Ron Lacks is the oldest grandson of Henrietta Lacks. He takes you on the inside of a story that has haunted him for the past 9 years! This book will definitely answer your questions as to how the family is really doing now. From Clover to Baltimore... giving you an inside look at what happen behind closed doors, that ultimately divided a once strong family.

Originally published as the second volume in Charlotte Smith's five volume series of The Letters of a Solitary Wanderer in 1800, The Story of Henrietta follows its heroine as her happy life with her aunt and her beloved is quickly shattered by her tyrannical father's cruelty. Henrietta's father, a slaveholder in Jamaica, summons her to his plantation, where he plans to marry her off to a man she despises. But when she tries to escape, she will encounter other unexpected dangers, including capture by lascivious natives, a slave rebellion, and a hermit with a mysterious and tragic history! This edition reprints the unabridged text of the 1800 first edition with a new introduction and extensive annotations by Janina Nordius. "The novella-length Story of Henrietta is among Charlotte Smith's least known but most interesting works, for here Smith leaves the ruins and castles of Europe behind to make a significant foray into another, yet so far little explored field of gothic terror and brutality. Setting her story in the British colony of Jamaica, she expands her political concerns to embrace also the controversial issue of colonial slavery, a system supported by powerful financial interests in the metropolis but also increasingly criticized there by the growing abolitionist movement. In representing the slaveholding island as a location so fraught with horrors and anxieties as to chill the blood of the most seasoned gothic reader, Smith conjures up a parallel between women's disempowerment and the situation of the enslaved, while at the same time considerably radicalizing her critique of the West Indian slave regimes already begun in her short novel The Wanderings of Warwick (1794)." - From the Introduction by Janina Nordius

The Life and Cells of Henrietta Lacks By: Jenna Adjei, Maya Anglin, Leah Daniels, Joshua Dunmore, Julian Dunmore, Francis Fynnwilliams, Sophia Geddie, Aaron Hammond, Kai Hammond, Simone Hammond, Sydney Herring, Isaiah Jolivet, Nia Jolivet, Mackenzie Jones, Kourtney Pryor, Kymberly Pugh, Ariana Sims This is the story of Henrietta Lacks told from the viewpoint of children, specifically middle schoolers in the Baltimore County Chapter of Jack and Jill of America, Incorporated. Their research and thoughts shed a unique light on the story of Henrietta Lacks, a woman who involuntarily and un-knowingly provided her cells for research; those cells have paved the way for numerous medical breakthroughs in leukemia, polio, the flu, cancer, AIDS, and other illnesses.

How one woman’s DNA has lived forever. Written by science author Rebecca Skloot, The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks (2011) investigates the intersection of racism and inequality in the medical community. Henrietta Lacks was a poor, Black tobacco farmer from the Southern US-- but the medical community knows her as HeLa (pronounced hee-lah). This is the story of Henrietta and her cells-- which were harvested without her consent-- and their immortal impact on the future of science and medicine. Do you want more free book summaries like this? Download our app for free at https://www.QuickRead.com/App and get access to hundreds of free book and audiobook summaries. DISCLAIMER: This book summary is meant as a summary and an analysis and not a replacement for the original work. If you like this summary please consider purchasing the original book to get the full experience as the original author intended it to be. If you are the original author of any book published on QuickRead and want us to remove it, please contact us at [email protected].

Summary of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks Rebecca Skloot, a specialist in science and medicine, authored The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, which has become one of her best-selling books. The book was published in 2010 and it remained on The New York Best seller list for a long time. This book is about the subjects of science and medicine, focusing on the story of a young woman who is struggling hard against cervical cancer. The story shows how this young patient and all around her are affected by the disease, and the benefits to scientific research that result from her disease. The book also brings into focus the social class and racism perspective which made the book a best seller. The author writes in the book that she got most of the information by studying the journal of the young woman’s daughter. Because this did not provide enough information to produce the book, she did more research on other content so she could find enough detail to present the whole story. In addition, Oprah Winfrey came up with the idea to turn the story into a Home Box Office movie. Overall, the book is an interesting read, which revolves around social and race issues, highlighting the plight of African-American people who have suffered considerably in the United States. Here is a Preview of What You Will Get: ⁃ A Full Book Summary ⁃ An Analysis ⁃ Fun quizzes ⁃ Quiz Answers ⁃ Etc. Get a copy of this summary and learn about the book.