Copyright © 2010 by Rebecca Skloot
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Crown Publishers,
an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
CROWN and the Crown colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Portions of this work appeared, sometimes in different form, in “Taking the Least of You,” The New York Times Magazine, copyright © 2006 by Rebecca Skloot; “Henrietta’s Dance,” Johns Hopkins Magazine, copyright © 2000 by Rebecca Skloot; “Enough with Patenting the Breast Cancer Gene,” Slate’s Double X, copyright © 2009 by Rebecca Skloot.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Skloot, Rebecca, 1972–
The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks / Rebecca Skloot.
p. cm.
1. Lacks, Henrietta, 1920–1951—Health. 2. Cancer—Patients—Virginia—Biography. 3. HeLa cells. 4. Cancer—Research. 5. Cell culture. 6. Medical ethics. I. Title.
RC265.6.L24S55 2009
616′.02774092—dc22
[B] 2009031785
eISBN: 978-0-307-58938-5
Photographs on the title page, and section pages for part one, two and three
copyright © 2010 Omar A. Quintero.
v3.0
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks Page 37