Trumbull Library's One Book-One Town program is now underway, with a variety of book talks, debates and forums. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot tells the true story of Henrietta Lacks, a young African-American woman who unknowingly changed American medicine.
Born in Virginia in 1920, Lacks grew up working in the fields on the same tobacco farm where her ancestors had toiled for generations as slaves. She married and became a mother of five until, in 1951, she developed a very aggressive form of cervical cancer and passed away a few months later at the age of 31. She died poor and her remains were buried in an unmarked grave.
That might very well have been the end of the story, except for the fact that, without her consent or even knowledge, doctors took a sample of her cancerous tumor. As it turned out, her rapidly-reproducing malignant cells had a unique quality in that they were miraculously immortal. Cultured in the lab by research scientists, the landmark discovery would prove to be invaluable in the development of everything from the polio vaccine to in-vitro fertilization to the Genome Project to cloning.
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