Book notes

A woman to whom we are all endebted

By: Joan Ruddiman – Special Writer
Rebecca Skloot’s first book took the publishing world by storm. Within days of its release, rave reviews propelled "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" (Crown Publishers, 2010) into the top echelons of Best Book lists.
The book is fascinating, but so, too, is the story of its inception and delivery.
Though Ms. Skloot has been interviewed everywhere and the book is widely reviewed, it bears noting that the book is about the woman behind the HeLa cells, well-known by scientists in many fields since the 1950s.
Henrietta Lacks died from an aggressive cancer in 1951. However, a small sample of cells taken from her proved to be imperishable. Scientists in the early stages of cell research realized that the HeLa cells flourished under any conditions. Cells that had been frozen, even those transported across the country and around the world, would begin mitosis (cell division) within a day of being in new culture.
This "first immortal human cell line ever grown in culture" soon produced trillions of cells – each week. Ms. Skloot writes in the prologue that, given that an individual cell weighs almost nothing, it is mind-boggling that the estimate is all the HeLa cells produced could weigh more than 50 metric tons and "grown end-to-end, they’d wrap around the Earth at least three times."
First used to cure polio, the HeLa cells have been an integral part of research for over 50 years – "the standard laboratory workhorse." HeLa has enabled scientists to create drugs to fight – among many others – leukemia, influenza, Parkinson’s disease, and sexually transmitted diseases like the scourge of the 21st century – Human Papilloma Virus or HPV. HeLa also ushered in the brave new world of experiments in space, in vitro fertilization, gene mapping, and cloning.
Ms. Skloot was 16 years old, in a community college summer school class making up credits for a failed high school course (because she never showed up) when she first heard of HeLa cells. The instructor, Donald Defler, engrossed in teaching about the miracle of cells, mentioned as an aside that much of what he was showing the students came from studying the cells of Henrietta Lacks.
"Henrietta’s cells have been living outside her body far longer than they ever lived inside it." And he continued, "Open the freezers in any cell culture lab in the world and you would find millions if not billions of Henrietta’s cells in vials on ice."
"Then, matter-of-factly, almost as an afterthought," Ms. Skloot vividly recalls, "he said, ‘She was a black woman,’ then he erased her name and class ended." Thus was the beginning of an obsession that would eventually take over Ms. Skloot’s life and ultimately change the lives of Henrietta’s family.
Rebecca Skloot is not what one might expect as a science writer. Tossed from public high school, she managed to get an education through an alternative program. She had childhood aspirations to be a veterinarian, and eventually earned an undergraduate degree in biological sciences. A serendipitous decision to take a writing class – to avoid a requirement she disdained – revealed a talent for writing non-fiction when she impressed the professor and her classmates with a macabre account of a morgue in the science building.
While working on her MFA at the University of Pittsburgh, Ms. Skloot decided to pursue her long simmering desire to discover the woman behind the HeLa cells. She was 27. Ten years later, the book is in print – and an instant success.
The publishing success, however, was plotted as craftily as the ingenious structure of the book. In telling the story of Henrietta Lacks, Ms. Skloot moves from science to sociology, from deciphering esoteric conversations with scientists to intimate moments with the Lacks family – all across decades and generations. In planning for the release of the book – before it ever took shape – Ms. Skloot pursued freelance jobs that would build a network of editors and writers who then were in place to help promote the book.
She wrote for The New York Times, the New York Times Magazine, Wired, Popular Science and "O" The Oprah Magazine. Significantly, she wrote many book reviews and, to the relief of editors, was always willing – and quite able – to review science books. Hipsters, women, techies became familiar with her name and with glimpses of the HeLa story before the book was out.
At first glance, Ms. Skloot, from Portland, Ore., is nothing at all like Henrietta Lacks, from the tobacco fields Clover, Va.
Ms. Skloot writes: "I grew up white and agnostic in the Pacific Northwest, my roots half New York Jew and half Midwestern Protestant." Henrietta and her family, who become central characters in the book, particularly her daughter, Deborah, were "deeply religious black Christians from the South." One woman was raised with many opportunities; the other lived with the unrelenting poverty of rural sharecroppers who moved to ever worse conditions in the poor and dangerous neighborhoods of Baltimore.
Yet their styles seem quite similar. Ms. Skloot is a high-energy personality, described as "dynamic" and "bold." (Watch her with Steven Colbert or listen to her with Terry Gross. She can’t be bested.) Henrietta Lacks is recalled as being a beauty with an amazing spirit. With five little kids, living in tough circumstances, she could whip up full dinners for dozens, and always have time to keep her finger and toenails perfectly painted with bright red polish.
Though Henrietta is long gone from the scene, except for her remarkable cells, Ms. Skloot finds much of Henrietta in her daughter, Dorothy. The book takes on a life of its own when the science writer encounters the force of Henrietta’s children.
Others have written about the cells, as acknowledged by the author, notably Michael Gold in "Conspiracy of Cells" (State of NY, 1985), Harriet Washington in "Medical Apartheid,"(Knopf Doubleday, 2008) and Hannah Landecker in "Culturing Life" (Harvard University Press, 2007). But true to her initial purpose, Rebecca Skloot wrote about the woman – not just her cells. She also raises ethical and economic issues that we all must come to grips with as technology changes the ancient rules governing medicine, science and the very meaning of being "human." The question, she writes, "isn’t whether human tissue and tissue research will be commercialized. They are and will continue to be …The question is how to deal with this commercialization …"
As compelling as these issues are, the power of the book, however, lies in the human story – the family’s story. It is a testimony to the author that she was able to break down fears, overcome suspicions, and eventually win over Henrietta’s family, who had felt so betrayed by the aloof and indifferent "John Hopkin" and the many who profited from their mother’s legacy. It is to Ms. Skloot’s credit that she never broke faith with the family, including keeping her promise that a portion of the profits from the book goes to the Henrietta Lacks foundation to support the education of Henrietta’s descendants.
Now that the book is out and widely praised, Ms. Skloot, working with Random House, is energetically promoting the book’s use in schools. She says – and it is true – that this book is "a science book, it’s a book about race, it is sociology, it is African American studies, women’s studies, journalism, history."
"The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" is impeccably constructed. The afterword could be the outline for a college course in cellular research. The extensive notes and index are much appreciated by academics.
Joan Ruddiman, Ed.D., is the coordinator/facilitator of the gifted and talented PRISM program at the Thomas R. Grover Middle School in the West Windsor-Plainsboro School District.