On the heels of the recent health care debate comes a timely bestseller about medical history and ethics: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. It tells the story of the woman behind HeLa cells, the first “immortal” line of cells grown in a lab. Although her cells facilitated everything from cancer research to cloning to the polio vaccine, the Lacks family never consented to their donation nor made a dime of profit from their use. In fact, they struggled to afford health care, and one son actually volunteered for medical testing to get a little money and a place to sleep. Lacks herself grew up in poverty, died at a young age from a particularly aggressive form of cervical cancer, and is buried in an unmarked grave.
The book raises interesting questions about medical ethics. Should we care if doctors routinely use discarded tissue for medical research? Should patient consent be required? Should the companies who convert these materials into medical products be the only ones to profit from their use, or do they owe something to the people who provided their raw materials?
Skloot is a gifted writer who profiles the characters in her tale as carefully as any novelist and makes complex scientific topics understandable and engaging reading. The book reminds us of the real, ordinary lives behind every scientific discovery and every historical event. And it illustrates once again how considerations of medical ethics lag behind technological and scientific advances.
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