![]() ![]() Unfortunately, a 90-minute melodrama is nowhere near enough time to fully realise the story’s incredible depth. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a rich, moving novel. Not knowing what was going on, who to go to for understanding, who to talk to about it. Rebecca, therefore, has to work hard to gain the trust of Deborah, while also navigating complex racial and socio-economic issues.įor years it seemed like a dream. They are suspicious of the media and angry at the medical community for their treatment of their mother. This task is made difficult because the Lacks family have been exploited and lied to for years. Through Henrietta’s daughter Deborah (Oprah Winfrey), Rebecca acquires knowledge of the woman behind the immortal cells – the mother of modern virology – and vows to tell the world who Henrietta was. In the film, Rebecca (Rose Byrne) works hard to find a way to get the Lacks family to trust and allow her access to learn more about their mother. RELATED: The White Garden: A Novel of Virginia Woolf (2009): An Intertextual Treasure Hunt Into Woolf’s World The film details the role that Rebecca Skloot played as an investigative journalist, uncovering the truth of who Henrietta was and trying to shine a light on her contribution to medical science. Unfortunately, her identity remained virtually untraceable as the medical community used her cells for advancements without ever acknowledging where the credit was due. Therefore, they were essentially immortal and Henrietta as a consequence was a medical miracle. These cells, HeLa (named so after Lacks’s names) were the first to reproduce outside of the human body. Without her permission or that of her family, cells from her cancerous tumor were removed by doctors at Johns Hopkins. In 1951, Henrietta Lacks died of cervical cancer. Your Cells Are Going To Help A Lot Of People And yet so many of us fail to recognise just who she was. The story is a heartbreaking one because we – all of us – have Henrietta Lacks to thank for so many medicines and vaccines that are a part of our everyday lives. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks was written by Rebecca Skloot and was adapted for television by HBO. And in that dichotomy lay both the horror and beauty of the unfolding narrative. The book read as part fiction, part improbable non-fiction. It had been a while since I read such a gripping, incredible novel. ![]() “It’s a story of medical arrogance and triumph, race, poverty, and deep friendship between the unlikeliest of people.”ĭirected by George C.I read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks a few months ago as part of my monthly book club selection. Based on Rebecca Skloot’s book of the same name, “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” is told from the perspective of Deborah.“I know I’m a part of you, and you’re a part of me,” she says in the trailer, seemingly speaking to her late mother.ĭeborah agrees to cooperate with Skloot, who is writing a book on Henrietta, because she’s determined to “learn about the mother she never knew and to understand how the unauthorized harvesting of Lacks’ cancerous cells in 1951 led to unprecedented medical breakthroughs, changing countless lives and the face of medicine forever,” HBO’s official synopsis for the film details. But the trailer is less concerned with the medical side of Henrietta’s story than its emotional impact on Deborah and the rest of her family. ![]() “Scientists had been trying to get cells to grow outside of the human body but they would always die - until Henrietta’s cells came along,” Skloot, played by Rose Byrne (“Spy”), explains in the spot. Henrietta Lacks (Renée Elise Goldsberry, “Hamilton”) changed history, yet as Deborah says, her own family wasn’t even aware of the story behind the legendary “HeLa” cells. “What you don’t understand is, we didn’t know nothin’ about nothin,” Deborah Lacks (Oprah Winfrey, “Lee Daniels’ The Butler”) says in a new trailer for “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.” Her mother’s cells helped the medical community advance research in cloning, chemotherapy, and in vitro fertilization - but the African-American tobacco farmer’s cells were used without her consent.
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