Playlist

Book

Story of a woman

Written by US journalist Rebecca Skloot, the award-winning book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a gripping combination of biography, science and history.

The book tells the true story of Henrietta Lacks, a poor black mother in Baltimore, whose cancerous cells - taken without her knowledge - enabled some of the most significant advances in 20th-century medicine, but with devastating, and later liberating, effects on her family. The book has been widely considered as one of the best science writings in this era. "Like any good scientific research, this beautifully crafted and painstakingly researched book raises nearly as many questions as it answers...," says the Science magazine.

"In a time when it's fashionable to demonize scientists, Skloot generously does not pin any sins to the lapels of the researchers. She just lets them be human ... (and) challenges much of what we believe of ethics, tissue ownership, and humanity."