Short review of Rebecca Skloot's book 'The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks'

There’s a short paragraph about three-quarter way through Rebecca Skloot’s book ‘The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks’, Crown Publishers, New York, 2009 that describes the autopsy carried out on Lacks's body after she died of cervical cancer in 1951. The description exemplifies the division between black and white within the Lacks family (there was a line of African American Lacks and Caucasian Lacks) and the segregation that occurred between the ‘white patients’ and the ‘colored ward’ at the John Hopkins Medical Centre where Lacks was treated for her disease.

The dead woman’s arms had been pulled up and back so that the pathologist could get at her chest…the body had been split down the middle and opened wide…grayish white tumor globules…filled the corpse. It looked as if the inside of the body was studded with pearls. Strings of them ran over the surfaces of the liver, diaphragm, intestine, appendix, rectum, and heart (p.212)
The writer of this autopsy report made it more poetic than scientific and appears to appreciate the preciousness of the immortal cancer cells that were taken from Henrietta Lacks and utilized in many experiments over the past five decades or so to develop polio vaccine, and are continually used for research into cancer, AIDS, the effects of radiation and toxic substances, gene mapping and other scientific research. See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeLa

HeLa are immortal cancer cells in that they will continue to live indefinitely if correctly nurtured. However, because they proliferate quickly in tissue culture they often contaminate other cell cultures. Indeed, ‘due to their ability to replicate indefinitely and their non-human number of chromosomes (HeLa have 84 rather than 46 chromosome)’the evolutionary biologist, Leigh M. Van Valen argued in 1991 that HeLa is the contemporary creation of a new species. I find this a little disturbing because for a long time African American’s were classified as other, sub-human or not human and his focus upon ‘contamination’ just fuels notions of the non-human infiltrating and taking over the human, almost always perceived as ‘white’.

Indeed, Skloot underscores in her book how many African Americans were used in experiments often without their consent or knowledge of the possible detrimental outcomes to their health or well-being, such as the Tuskegee syphilis experiment between 1932 and 1972, which recruited 339 impoverished people with syphilis, who were not treated with penicillin which could have cured their disease. See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_syphilis_experiment

Skloot outlines the experience of Henrietta’s daughter Deborah, who lived in fear of being experimented upon in John Hopkins Medical Centre. Deborah’s fears grew out of urban myths associated with the medical centre as well as verifiable facts that attest to a history of medical experimentation on African Americans, inmates, women and children by various organizations, including Nazi medical experiments on Jewish prisoners during WW2. See:

http://mrgreenbiz.wordpress.com/2009/09/02/vaccines-and-medical-experiments-on-children-minorities-woman-and-inmates-1845-2007/

Many may not be aware that many Australian children (Indigenous and non-indigenous) placed in orphanages between the years of 1945 – 1970 were used in medical experiments that involved vaccines. It was only late last year that an apology was given to what is now being called ‘The Forgotten Australians’ by the Prime Minister, Mr Kevin Rudd and following that, an apology by Glyn Davis, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Melbourne for the part that the University played in experiments on children, who were considered unworthy when removed from uneducated or poor parents considered by authorities as unfit.

As the Senate inquiry into the Forgotten Australians recorded in 2004, in the years after this War children were repeatedly struck down by outbreaks of polio, influenza, whooping cough and other diseases. Many died or were left disabled. In response, medical research institutions including the University of Melbourne worked urgently to develop vaccines. The report states: These vaccines needed trialing and children in orphanages were used as the ‘subjects’ for a range of speculated reasons, including that they were often the most susceptible to disease as an epidemic could sweep through an orphanage. 1
Exploitation of minority groups, the poor, the criminally insane often shows up in other ways, such as the illegal trade in human organs. In the affluent Western world we are encouraged by the rhetoric of technological humanism to believe that medicine and technology will improve our health and extend our lives. However, although medical technology enables organ transplantation there is a distinct lack of donated organs to cater for the worldwide demand. This has lead to a monetary value ascribed to, and a black-market trade in human organs (heart, kidney, liver, corneas), growing numbers of human organ brokers, and the potential for exploitation of the poor who can gain financially if they sell their bodily fluids (blood, sperm, ovum), tissue or organs. Nancy Scheper-Hughes explains:

In general, the flow of organs follows the modern routes of capital: from South to North, from Third to First World, from poor to rich, from black and brown to white, and from female to male.2.
Indeed as Skloot points out the Lacks family has not benefited at all financially from the sale of Henrietta’s immortal cell line, even though they have been and are essential to a multi-billion dollar biomedical industry.

One single thing that comes through in this book (and this becomes evident in the various interviews Skloot undertook with Lacks family members) and that is, the marked contrast between the billions of dollars made by pharmaceutical and other biomedical companies through the use of HeLa and the abject poverty that the Lacks family experienced and continue to experience. Not only have they not benefited from the sale of their mother’s cancer cells, but they cannot afford health insurance or education. I personally find it abhorrent that some people have to consider selling a body part in order to survive. I am saddened by the fact that Deborah had so little in order to remember her mother– a bible, her mother’s medical record, a photo; and that Henrietta gave so much to the world. I sincerely hope that Skloot’s book will pave the way for the world not only recognizing, but applauding Henrietta Lacks’s legacy. If nothing else, Rebecca Skloot’s book will remind us that thousands of women every year die from cervical cancer and that many are alive today because of early screening and detection tests.

Rebecca assures me that she has:

…set up a Henrietta Lacks Foundation scholarship fund, which I'll help start with some of the proceeds from my book. Anyone will be able to donate to it. My hope with the scholarship fund is that it will provide money to help descendants of Henrietta Lacks.I write about the scholarship fund in the book, and there will be information on the book jacket about how to donate once it’s online. 3
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1. Glyn Davis, Vice-chancellor, The University of Melbourne 18 November 2009.
2. Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. (2000) ‘The Global Traffic in Human Organs’, Current Anthropology, Volume 41, Number 2, April 2000m q 2000 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved 0011-3204/2000/4102-0004, p.6.
3. Response to a facebook question that I asked Rebecca on Sunday, 27 December, 2009.