Henrietta Lacks' Story Told at Last, Thanks to Dogged Writer

Henrietta Lacks may have saved more lives than any other person in history. A poor black woman who died almost 60 years ago, her story is everywhere this week thanks to a intrepid reporter named Rebecca Skloot.

If you see a photo of Skloot, who's 37 and looks younger, you may be tempted to write her off as the latest pretty young thing the media has fallen for. She is pretty, but that's not all. This time, the hoo-hah is well deserved.

Her first book, "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks," is a triumph. It got a rave review from The New York Times last week and another favorable look on Sunday. Skloot has been on NPR, in the Los Angeles Times, on ABC World News and just about everywhere else. I reviewed the book for the Dallas Morning News Sunday, excerpted below:


"It's 1951 in the city of Baltimore. In the colored section of Johns Hopkins charity hospital, a doctor begins treatment on a young mother of five named Henrietta Lacks.

"Before lodging a tube filled with radium against the cervical tumor that will soon kill her, he scrapes two dime-sized patches of tissue from the mass. Without her knowledge, he gives them to researchers.

"Scientists around the world are trying at that time to grow human cells in laboratories. Everyone is failing.

Until now. For reasons no one understands, Henrietta's cells flourish. They divide, again and again and again. Called HeLa cells, after the first two letters of her first and last name, they become the most famous human cells on earth.

"Shipped to researchers everywhere, they are used in finding a vaccine for polio, in developing in vitro fertilization, in measuring effects of the atom bomb. They form the basis for research on cancer, viruses and Alzheimer's . . . Scientists become famous, companies make fortunes, multitudes that would have died now live because of one woman, whose body differed in a way that no one quite understands."

Skloot first heard about Lacks in a community college biology class. Her teacher was one of the few people who knew Lacks' name.

When Skloot became a science reporter, she remembered the story her teacher told her and decided to investigate. But Lacks' family had been so badgered and frightened by people who got to them before Skloot did that they refused to talk to her. She kept asking. They kept refusing. She kept asking.

Finally, she broke through. But that was only the beginning. Ten years after she started, Skloot finally was ready to publish.

"The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" ought to be mandatory reading for everyone starting a career, if for no other reason than that it shows how much dogged effort goes into excellence. Skloot's success comes from talent and intelligence. She's pretty. And she got some breaks. But without sacrifice, uncommon tenacity and hard work, she would not be where she is. In our world of instant celebrity, we cannot give our children that lesson often enough.