Skloot's Henrietta Lacks Book: A Family Reckoning — SkimNews
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- Henrietta Lacks, a Black Virginia tobacco farmer, died of cervical cancer in 1951 at 31; cells taken without consent became the HeLa immortal cell line underpinning covid-19 vaccines, cancer treatments and IVF.
- Lacks's husband and five children were not told for more than 20 years that her cells were being kept alive in labs worldwide, even as the family often lacked access to healthcare.
- Rebecca Skloot spent over a decade researching before publishing 'The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks' in 2010; it became a bestseller and was adapted into a 2017 Oprah Winfrey film.
- Veronica Robinson, Lacks's great-granddaughter and a patients' rights advocate in Baltimore, told the reviewer the family agrees the book ensured Lacks's name 'would no longer remain hidden behind scientific terms like HeLa.'
- Lawrence Lacks, Lacks's oldest son and longest-surviving child, died in 2023 having been particularly aggrieved by the book and its film adaptation; the reviewer notes the narrative includes graphic family details published with little family control.
- Robinson says she believes Lacks would have consented to her cells being used 'if someone had explained... that the cells could have saved lives around the world' — but 'she wasn't given the opportunity to make the decision for herself.'
Why it matters: The book that made HeLa a household name also published graphic details of the Lacks family's private trauma without their full control — reproducing, in narrative form, the same power imbalance that the unconsented cell extraction first created in 1951.
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