Thank you, Henrietta Lacks!

I am in a book club via facebook thanks

to my pal, Lea.

In the past the books were fiction.

Entertaining but not my type of book.

Still I read them because I love to read and

try things outside of my normal genre.

This month though, I cannot stop reading

this mostly autobiography book called

THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS

by Rebecca Skoot

Oh my! What a book!

Back in my nursing school days I had heard in textbooks

about Hela cells and myself, just as the author,

never thought about what HeLa meant.

Here comes this book not only to answer a question

I never thought to ask but to once again

tell me just how lucky I personally am for Henrietta Lacks.

She was a poor black tobacco farmer in 1951 with three

young children under the age of 4 when she was

faced with cervical cancer.

Back in those days there was no real treatment for cancer

of her type and no way to test for cures.

Yet, against her knowing, a brave doctor took some of

Henrietta's cancer cells and brought them to his lab.

He truly believed these cells would die just as all specimens

he had tried before yet Henrietta's were different.

Her cells not only lived but thrived and multiplied.

In those days, when cells were used they would take

the first two letters of the patient's first and last name

and that is where the infamous cells began to be called

HeLa.

HeLa cells were the first to survive and this doctor

began mass multiplying her cells and spreading

them all over the United States.

Now medical scientists had a way to test chemotherapy,

polio vaccines, and many other things that

before could not be figured out.

The parts that really get me that all of this was

done without the permission of Henrietta or her family.

Unfortunately Henrietta died and no one in her family

knew of this until 20 years later.

Such an amazing story.

Although I have always known how fortunate, how lucky

I am to have beaten a cancer back in 1968,

I am even more floored by the fact that

as close as 1951 there were no known chemotherapy

and cancer treatments that were known.

The treatments were barbaric before 1951.

Had I been born just 10 years earlier I doubt

any physician would have known how to treat Wilms' Tumor,

I most assuredly would have died from the big C.

The book also gives me chills when it talks about

the things that were done to patients without consent

prior to HeLa cells.

It is because of her that there are now informed consent

laws. The most amazing and eye-opening book I have

ever read, and I have read many, many books.

The author goes into not only Henrietta's life, tells

the personal story of herself, but of her family that still lives

today, poor and never gaining any financial benefit from

the milestones their loved one gave to the medical profession.

Whether you read or not, this book should be bought and

read by everyone. I promise you will not be disappointed

and will also so thankful for this woman who

has, because of her cells, saved many people's lives

as well as the reason for so many cures to so many diseases.

If no one has ever said it before,

I must say, Thank you, Henrietta Locks and all your heirs!