The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Rebecca Skloot 2010

Devastation Rating

Emotionally Ruined
medicine race science ethics

Our Take

Henrietta Lacks died of cervical cancer in 1951. Her cells — taken without her knowledge — became the most reproduced human cells in history, generating billions of dollars in medical research while her family remained uninsured. The gap between them is American race and medicine at their most specific.

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