I was blown away by this book. Simple, everyday living by a local parapalegic, living in my own neighborhood. It is told with honesty, dignity and self deprecating humor.
Henrietta Lacks was a poor black woman who was diagnosed
with cancer in the 1950s. Cells from her body became the first human
cells to be successfully grown in culture. They outlived her. They proliferated.
They revolutionized medicine and continue to be used by scientists today,
but they were taken from Henrietta without her permission or the knowledge
of her family.
This book rocked my world. It uses a scientific development to tell
a story about a period of history, a singular woman, and a whole mess
of ethics, ideas, and thrilling, fascinating facts. Rebecca Skloot takes
a stunning amount of hard-earned and meticulous research and turns it
into a book that grabs onto the heart and rattles the brain. This book
makes science more than accessible. It turns a subject that may be unfamiliar
or unconsidered into a human story that is told with such clarity and
compassion that you can't help but care, deeply and absolutely.
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