Lorin Kleinman   Reading, writing, and occasionally eating.

Open google and type in “HeLa cells,” and a million and a half hits appear. This is because these cells are used and known universally throughout the medical world: far, far more than any other cell line. What has been much less well known is that HeLa stands for Henrietta Lacks, the woman from whom the original cells were taken. In The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot–a born storyteller–set out to tell both stories, Henrietta’s and the cells’.

In 1951, Henrietta Lacks, a poor African-American woman living in Baltimore, was diagnosed with a virulent form of cervical cancer, and began receiving treatment at Johns Hopkins. During the same period, scientists had been trying to culture an “immortal” cell line: a line of cells that would survive for an extended period of time in the laboratory. All of their attempts had failed.

Without the knowledge of Henrietta or her family (a common practice), doctors took samples from her cervix and sent them to a lab to culture. Several days later, it became clear that they had finally found an immortal cell line–HeLa, as it was named, following the conventions of the time, multiplied rapidly and was virtually indestructible. By the time Henrietta died, eight months later, her cells were famous.

In the intervening years, HeLa cells were used for everything from the development of the polio vaccine to testing how cells survive in space. But Henrietta’s family did not learn of the cell line until decades later, and then were repeatedly frustrated in their attempts to pry information from the medical world, which rarely told them anything, and provided information of only the most technical kind.

The family’s difficulties were exacerbated by both their scientific illiteracy and their timidity about challenging doctors. Neither is a condemnation: in a country where the reality of evolution is still being debated, the Lackses’ failure to understand cells is hardly shocking. Nor is it surprising that they felt unable to stand up to the vastly better-educated doctors at Johns Hopkins.

Nonetheless, one of the most haunting passages in the book describes a conversation between a Hopkins researcher and Henrietta’s husband Day. Day believed the researcher to have said that Henrietta was still alive at Johns Hopkins and being experimented on. He asked no questions of the researcher, and issued no demands. The value of both scientific literacy and a middle-class sense of entitlement is compellingly clear.

As HeLa cells made vast contributions to medical knowledge and large profits for medical companies (though never for Johns Hopkins), Henrietta’s family remained extremely poor, often unable to afford health insurance. Resentment and confusion grew within the family, and Henrietta’s daughter Deborah–Skloot’s lead character, who became a friend to Skloot over the ten years she spent working on the book–was driven almost to a nervous breakdown.

Finally, though, the family began to learn the facts surrounding HeLa. A sympathetic Austrian researcher led Deborah and her brother to a bank of freezers containing their mother’s cells. Deborah warmed a vial in her hands. “You’re famous,” she whispered. “Just nobody knows it.” Thanks to Skloot’s marvelous book, they do now.