The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Every human being should read this book. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks tackles issues of history, race, class, gender, science & ethics, but reads like a novel. How do you balance the need for advances in science with the needs of the individual? For me, the question of should a company make tons of money with no benefit to the individual or the individual’s heirs had an obvious answer, but courts disagree based on the common historical errors in reciting the story of the HeLa cell line & the belief that researchers, universities and biotech companies only care about curing us while ignoring the fact that research gets put on hold by them, not the humans who provide samples, when they sue each other and assert proprietary rights over another person’s cell line. Rebecca Skloot tries to correct this error.