Rebecca Skloot Blog

Rebecca was introduced by Biddy Martin, and started off by giving a summary of her book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.  She read several passages from the book, and talked about their significance.  Rebecca shared stories about her research and her relationship with the Lacks family, particularly Debera, Henrietta's daughter.  She explained that while writing this story she wanted to maintain a neutral and unbiased position and that she wanted to keep herself out of the story.  However, because she became so close to the Lacks family, she had to include herself in the book as a character, because she had played an important role to the family.  i found it interesting to learn about Rebecca's interaction with Henrietta's family, and also the doctors and researchers that were on the other side.  Rebecca explained that many of the researchers using HeLa cells didn't know where they actually originated from, and some of the researchers were even lied to about where HeLa cells originated.  I also found it interesting that many of the researchers were fascinated by the truth of the HeLa cells, but that no one knows why Henrietta's cells are immortal.