I keep wanting to call this book “The immortal cells of Henrietta Sacks, because it is her cells that are in fact immortal.
The basic story (except this is nonfiction) is fairly well known: Henrietta Sacks was a black working-class woman from the South who moved to Baltimore with her husband. He worked (I think) in the steelyards there, and they got by. They had four children. But Henrietta, while still young, contracted a very nasty cervical cancer. She was treated in the charity wards of John Hopkins hospital. In the course of her treatment, some of her cancer cells were removed and given to researchers – without her knowledge. This was in the early 1950’s.
At that time, researchers had been unsuccessful in growing cells in laboratory settings, hindering their research. Henrietta’s cells proved to be the answer to their problem – they were strong, aggressive, and grew like crazy. Fast forward to today, and Henrietta’s cells have been used in hundreds of thousands of commercial and research applications around the world.
This book is absorbing, and has several facets:
--How the book came to be, and how it was written form the backbone of the narrative. This is even more significant because the book becomes to a large degree the story of Henrietta’s children – their mother’s famous cells have a large impact on their lives, particularly the youngest daughter, Deborah.
--The author tells Henrietta’s life story. This gives a perspective on the great black migration from the South in those days, life in the South versus life in the North.
--The central issue is whether researchers had a right to take the cells without Henrietta’s knowledge or consent. This becomes more relevant when we are told that commercial labs took over much of the production and sale of these cells, for profit (none of which went to either the original researchers or to the family). In fact, most medical institutions today will ask patients to sign a release that they understand that any products removed from their bodies may be disposed of as the institution sees fit.
My observations:
--First, this is history, which I enjoy reading. Families in the South tended to intermarry, which I found interesting (but unappealing!). Although the black families in the North were poor, they seemed more casual about life. Henrietta didn’t seem to brood about her cancer. Her main concern was an inability to have more children.
--These cancer cells probably could have come from a person of any race. But because Henrietta was black, it added another dimension to the moral problem. The blacks of Baltimore at that time were somewhat paranoid about the “free” treatment at John Hopkins. They suspected the hospital of using their poor black patients for medical experiments. In fact, the author uncovers that one of Henrietta’s daughters, who was epileptic and slow and had to be committed to a mental institution, was subject to medical experimentation there – some of which was probably painful.
--Henrietta’s children, particularly Deborah, were to my view a little obsessed with the “theft” of their mother‘s cells. Part of this was due to the fact that some people tried to exploit the family. One charlatan pretended to represent them against John Hopkins. It took this book’s author over a year to gain Deborah’s trust, but they subsequently became close. Deborah was a baby when her mother died, but let the stolen cells destroy her equilibrium over and over.
If my cells were taken for medical research and sold, with or without my knowledge, I wouldn’t care. Nor would I expect recognition for this. Henrietta’s family kept talking about her cells, when in fact these were cancer cells.
But this story looms large in Black History for some of the reasons discussed above. And this book does a great job of telling it.
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