Brief Summary Of The Book 'Henrietta Lacks'

This novel goes through the story of a woman named Henrietta Lacks. The book is based of her story that started with a cancer that was discovered in her when she thought she was possibly pregnant because of a feeling of a knot on her cervix. Although she wasn't pregnant they did find out she had a cervical cancer. Little did she know that some of her cancer tissue was removed and sent to George Gey’s lab in Hopkins. The scientist there, one named Gey , have been trying to get human cells to divide infinitely for a long time. This was all done without the permission of Henrietta nor any of her family members. Good for the lab the sample did start to divide and very fast, sadly Henrietta at the age of 31 she the fight against her cancer was over. Her husband David later allowed Ethel and Galen, a cousin and wife, to move into
Deborah also learns of her moms cells being called HeLa cells. Soon the family gets calls from the lab asking for their blood for an issue they were having with the spread of the HeLa cells. The Lacks family had no knowledge of what the cells where though or where they came from. The researchers also kept it that way cause they knew the huge amounts of profit they were making from it all. This was all bad because the way the family saw it they believed Henrietta was still alive and was being tested on in many labs and also because they have been living in poverty when what they don't know is they could be rich! Skloot the author of the book gets untangled in the story as she helps Deborah uncover the truth of her her mom and sister Elsie. They find out sad news of Elsie actually dying alone and was abused in the hospital she was in. Skloot also ends up answering the questions over their mother and how she contributed to medical research to change the