The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks By Rebecca Skloot

“The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” is a book by Rebecca Skloot journaling the story of the title woman and how her “immortal” cells have impacted science. The book starts out with a word from the author Skloot, where she recounts how she got involved in Henrietta’s story. Chapter one begins with Henrietta going to the doctors at John Hopkins on January 29th 1951 to get tested for a “knot” she felt inside her. The 1st doctor she went to couldn’t identify the cause and recommended she go to John Hopkins hospital. John Hopkins was not only one of the top hospitals at the time, it was also the only nearby major hospital that treated black patients. Howard Jones, the acting gynecologist, took a biopsy of Henrietta’s tumor and sent her home.

The Lacks are approached by a known conman lawyer Cofeild who tries to sue them. The Speed foundation was founded to raise funds towards a Henrietta museum. Deborah takes Skloot to go visit Zakarriyya, and Skloot stays with Deborah. Deborah freaks out about London having clones of her mother, but the article just meant cell cloning. Deborah, Skloot, and Zakarriyya go to Hopkins to see a sample of HeLa cells. Deborah and Skloot visit Crownsville Hospital Center and meet Paul Lurz, and he gives them a picture of Elsie and what medical records he has on her. They found out that most of the records were destroyed due to asbestos, and that Elsie had undergone Pneumoencephalography, an experimental treatment. Deborah and Skloot talk about their findings so far and compare notes, but have an argument where Deborah pins Skloot to the wall. Deborah decides she’s going to open a museum in honor of her mother. She and Skloot visit her brother Gary and Deborah starts to freak out. Deborah’s doctor advised her to cut out stressful things due to high blood pressure and chance of a stroke. She still tries to enroll in college classes and plans to go to a national conference to talk about her mother. 9/11 attacks happens, and Deborah has a stroke from stress. Not long after multiple of the Lacks die, a cousin Fred from throat cancer, Day from a stroke, and Cootie from suicide. In the last chapter, Skloot

It provides a platform to investigate the metabolism, biochemistry, physiology, and biology of wild-type and diseased cells. The book specifically mentions “roller-tube culturing”, a technique George Guy developed. In which a large wooden drum turns like a cement mixture for 24 hours a day to keep the culture medium in constant motion within the test tubes. In chapter 13 the development of freezing methods that still kept the cell alive made a huge impact on transportation and cell research. It allowed HeLa to be transported worldwide so more researchers had access. They could even freeze cells at different development stages, then thaw them back out when needed. Sterilization was also a newer practice.

As of modern cell cultures, vast improvements have been made with updates in technology. Cell culture is used to study substances with toxic, corrosive, or mutagenic properties and how they’d react when in contact with human cells. There are better and cheaper forms of sterilization available, as well as more widespread knowledge and usage of safety equipment. The roller-tube technique previously mentioned has been since updated to hold more cultures and specialized versions have been made for different types of cells. Binding agents, culture mediums, and even temperature controls have vastly improved (Wray