The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Tuesday, March 23 2010
by Frank Stasio and Katy Barron
rebeccaskloot.com
Long before there was such a thing as “informed consent,” a young doctor cut a cancerous tumor out of Henrietta Lacks without her knowledge. The cancer took Henrietta’s life, but the cells from her tissue sample became the first continuously dividing cell line ever grown in a Petri dish. Scientists around the world used her HeLa cells to develop medicines like the polio vaccine and technologies like gene mapping. But no one bothered to tell Henrietta’s living relatives. They found out by happenstance some 20 years later. Author Rebecca Skloot joins host Frank Stasio to discuss HeLa’s impact on science and medical ethics and her new book “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” (Crown/2010).
