HeLa 3

I was worried when we were assigned this book. Some of the medical articles that we have been reading take as long as a book to read, so when I saw that we only had three class days to read Skloot’s book, I wasn’t lacking any anxiety. But since Skloot made her book a story, it went by very quick. Not only was skloot’s book a quick read, it was accessible. In Rebecca’s acknowledgments, she mentions an individual named Lee that helped her to “care deeply” about story structure (340).  I think anyone else that found this read understandable, and hard to put down, owes some thanks to Lee. I also like how Skloot leaves any personal bias out of it. It is hard to determine where Skloot stands on the issue of if a patient has a right to their tissues or specimens taken from their bodies. It is also difficult to determine if Skloot thinks a patient should receive any profits made from their contributions to science. I have not read Washington’s chapter on HeLa, but I can already guess that it’s very biased. I imagine Washington thinks the Lacks were wronged and deserve compensation more than anything else. If I were to read a biology book and it mentioned Henrietta Lacks or the HeLa cell line, I would probably forget the name and cell line as soon as I set the book down. But after reading Skloot’s interpretation, I doubt I will ever forget who Henrietta Lacks was and her contribution to Science. I am comfortable in my belief that that’s what Rebecca Skloot set out to do. Skloot’s book should be a model for any medical historian. Any medical topic can be tough to digest, as mentioned some of the articles we read for class were brutal. Some were long and/or complex and; therefore, inaccessible. Other articles and Skloot’s book differed; they offered a story and intertwined it with science and medicine. In return, I walked away with not only knowledge, but a meaning behind that knowledge.

Domalski