The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

I like to think my fascination with medical information is more than an interest in Grey's Anatomy. When I heard about this book from the Phenomenally Indecisive Book Club, I couldn't wait to read it. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot is an in depth look into the lives of the family behind the HeLa cells. When Henrietta was treated for cervical cancer in the fifties, part of her tumor was saved to be studied and the resulting cells were called HeLa. Some of the first cells to survive studying, they played a huge roll in the development of Polio and other vaccines, cancer research, DNA mapping, even in vitro fertilization. But while all this progress was made using her involuntarily taken cells, her family struggled with misinformation, ignorance, and abuse by the medical community. The story is fascinating and really makes you think about ethics, where we've come from and how much room we have to improve as a society. A great read.