The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot. Grand rapids: CrownBooks, 2010. 369 pages. Reviewed by Carine T. Gomes.

The first book by Rebecca Skloot, the #1 New York Times Bestselling, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks talks about Henrietta Lacks (sometimes erroneously calles Henrietta Lakes, Helen Lane or Helen Larson) and the immortal cell line known as HeLa that came from her cells. Henrietta went to John Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s because she felt like a "knot" inside her. After exams, she learned she had cancer of the cervix. It was spetacular. Her cells have been taken during a biopsy and cultured without anyone's permission. 

After her death, in 1951, the HeLa cells could be kept alive and grown. This represented a big boon to medical and biological research. The cells have been used for research into cancer, AIDS, polio vaccine and a lot more. For two decades, Henrietta's surviving children were unaware of the existence of their mother's cells.

In "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks", Rebecca Skloot a science writer, show us a criticism of science, the importance of poverty and race when you're a black American woman during the Segregation.

Skloot did a lot of research about Henrietta, her family and with perseverance she finally wrote this book. For her family, Henrietta was daughter, wife, mother and grandmother. Before even being a sick person with immortal cells, she had a family. Rebecca shows us in this book how at that time, the color of one person could change everything. They did not care of who she were, since they changed her name a lot of times. 

This book is a good perception of the society, and about how you can be totally forgotten over something more important: Medicine. It is a real life detective story, we find passion through the chapters. Rebecca Skloot spent a lot of years working in every books, every sites, every achives, to show to the world the untold story of this black woman. Skloot is from Northern America, and when she was still a student she heard for the first time the name of Henrietta Lacks. That is where all the story began.

The central thesis is to discover the untold story of Henrietta Lacks. It is all about the Lacks family, and Henrietta. We see how her cells were used without her or her family's knowledge. This story becomes an ethical question of what rights people had/have in how their cells, blood, etc. were used in medical research. The impact that this story had on science is unbelievable. Skloot show us the facts about what happened, good and bad, and since she is a science writer we can ask ourselves why she would do a story that in a way shows us the bad side of medicine.

In my opinion, the author only wanted to tell this story that touched her in a lot of ways. She fought for the rights of this family, to let people know what happened to this woman and her family. After meeting Deborah, I think it motivated her even more. This book is very inspiring, and even if, like me, you are not a follower of science and all that world, you will love to read that. It is a non-fiction book, and the way the book is written really fascinates me. You should read this book if you want to know the truth about a woman that maybe in some way, helped your life becoming better.