The Immortal Life « Rebecca Skloot

The Immortal Life « Rebecca Skloot.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks has been getting rave reviews so far, and looks fascinating. It’s the story of the woman whose cancer cells were immortalized to give the world HeLa cells (named after Henrietta Lacks).

These cells are a mainstay of biological and medical research, so much so that I briefly used them myself during my PhD. This book details the forgotten story of Henrietta Lacks, who got no credit for the cells taken without her knowledge, despite the amazing scientific achievements that her cells enabled. (See WIRED‘s great infographic showing how they’ve contributed to science. It sounds like the book’s also about a whole lot more. I definitely plan on buying it, you can check out the book’s official webpage and also Rebecca Skloot’s blog.

Here’s Carl Zimmer’s take on the book and Skloot’s social networking enhanced promotion of it.