A short life of the author
Rebecca Skloot (b. 1972) was born in Springfield, Illinois. She studied biological sciences at Colorado State University, where a biology teacher first mentioned HeLa cells and she learned that the woman behind them was named Henrietta Lacks. She holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from the University of Pittsburgh. She spent more than a decade researching and writing the book, including years building trust with the Lacks family — particularly Henrietta’s daughter Deborah, who became the book’s emotional centre.
Life and Career
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (2010) braids three narratives into a single story. The first is scientific: in 1951, George Gey, a researcher at Johns Hopkins, cultured cells from Henrietta Lacks’s cervical tumour and discovered that they grew with unprecedented speed and resilience. Named HeLa, these cells became the most widely used human cells in biological research — essential to developing the polio vaccine, understanding cancer, studying viruses (including HIV), testing drug reactions, and mapping the human genome. HeLa cells have been involved in over 75,000 scientific studies. They were the first human cells to survive and reproduce outside the body.
The second narrative is biographical: Henrietta Lacks was a Black tobacco farmer from Clover, Virginia, who was treated at Johns Hopkins — one of the few hospitals that accepted Black patients in segregated Baltimore — and died of aggressive cervical cancer at age thirty-one. Her cells were taken without her knowledge or consent, a practice that was legal at the time but raises profound ethical questions about bodily autonomy, particularly when the body in question belongs to a poor Black woman.
The third narrative is Skloot’s own journey: the decade she spent tracking down the Lacks family, earning their trust, and learning their story. Deborah Lacks — Henrietta’s youngest daughter, who had spent her life searching for information about the mother she barely remembered — became the book’s most vivid and heartbreaking character. The Lacks family could not afford health insurance while companies sold their mother’s cells for profit.
The book sold over three million copies, spent more than six years on the New York Times bestseller list, was translated into over thirty languages, and was adopted as required reading at hundreds of universities. The 2017 HBO film starred Oprah Winfrey as Deborah Lacks.
Impact and Legacy
Skloot established the Henrietta Lacks Foundation, which provides scholarships and health-care assistance to the Lacks family and to others who have been exploited by medical research without their consent. The book’s publication catalysed a broader public conversation about informed consent, the ownership of human tissue, and the racial dimensions of medical exploitation — a conversation that led, in 2023, to a legal settlement between the Lacks family and Thermo Fisher Scientific, which had been selling HeLa cells commercially.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is frequently compared to other works that combine science writing with social justice — Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, Jonathan Harr’s A Civil Action — but its unique achievement is the integration of three genres (science writing, biography, and investigative journalism) into a single seamless narrative.
Key Works
- The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (2010)
What are HeLa cells and why are they important?
HeLa cells are a line of human cells derived from a cervical cancer tumour taken from Henrietta Lacks at Johns Hopkins Hospital in 1951. They were the first human cells to survive and reproduce indefinitely outside the body, and have been used in over 75,000 scientific studies — including the development of the polio vaccine, cancer research, and gene mapping. They were taken without Lacks’s knowledge or consent, and her family received no compensation.
Collecting Skloot
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (2010, Crown/Random House, New York) first editions bring $20–$60 in fine condition with the dust jacket. Signed copies bring $50–$120. The book’s cultural significance and its continued use in university curricula ensure sustained demand.