Winner of the Wellcome Trust Book Prize, this book  is about Henrietta Lacks, a poor African-American tobacco farmer from Southern Virginia. In 1951 she was diagnosed with cervical cancer and without her knowledge, her doctor took a piece of her tumour and sent it to George Gey who was head of tissue culture research at Johns Hopkins University. Gey had been trying to grow human cells for decades, and it had never worked. Henrietta's cells became the first immortal cell line ever grown in culture, which means they live indefinitely in laboratories as long as you feed them and keep them warm. They are one of the most important things that happened in medicine.

The cells, called HeLa, were used to develop the polio vaccine and went up with the first space missions to see what would happen to cells in zero gravity. They were the first cells to be cloned. Her genes were some of the first ever mapped. The scientific landmarks just go on and on.

No one told Henrietta's family the cells had been taken until the 1970s when scientists went back to her family and wanted to do research on them, without consent, in order to learn more about the cells. The book traces the history of modern medicine and bioethics, but also the story of Henrietta's family struggling with the aftermath of discovering what happened to her cells.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is being translated into more than twenty languages, and is currently being adapted into a young adult book. A film adaptation is also underway.

Available in the Senior Department library.