Beyond the Threshold of Immortality

Read Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and you'll never look at a blood sample in the same way again. The book, which follows success of scientists' successful attempts to grow and sustain the first immortal line of human cells in a lab, of course raises questions about ownership of genetic material: to whom ultimately belongs the rights to blood and organs, the scrapings of tissues we leave behind in little labeled vials when we go to our doctors' offices for routine tests? Given that millions of dollars can turn on our cells and the patents that can come from them, the question is far from academic.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is far more than a medical history. It is a biography, and, finally, an elegy, for a woman whose cells contributed to advances in medicine such as the polio vaccine, chemotherapy, and in vitro fertilization but who has been identified in textbooks, magazines, and on internet sites as Helen Lane. Even today her cells are known by the abbreviation HeLa. Skloot helps to shed light on the woman behind the cells and the family she left behind when she died of cervical cancer. The most moving parts of the book are Skloot's descriptions of the Lacks family fathoming and measuring their loss through the lens of the HeLa cervical cells.

By reminding us of the woman who exists behind the research, Skloot shows us both how far we've come and how far we need to go.