The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

“Did you know Henrietta had an epileptic daughter?” Pattillo asked. “No.” “She died at fifteen, soon after Henrietta’s death. De ...

Deborah sat silent for a long moment, then screamed, “That’s right!” She giggled and star- ted talking like we’d known each othe ...

She hung up and I sat stunned, receiver crooked in my neck, frantically scribbling notes I didn’t understand, like brother = mur ...

I told her I was hoping to talk to David, and she asked who was calling. Rebecca, I said, afraid she’d hang up if I said anythin ...

O n April 10, 1951, three weeks after Henrietta started radiation therapy, George Gey ap- peared on WAAM television in Baltimore ...

cardboard boxes filled with sawdust. When shipments were ready to go, Gey would warn re- cipients that the cells were about to “ ...

Scientists had been trying to grow living cells since before the turn of the century, but their samples had always died. As a re ...

Frenchman with mismatched eyes—one brown, the other blue—who rarely went out without his surgeon’s cap. He wrongly believed that ...

At one point he said the cells “would reach a volume greater than that of the solar sys- tem.” The Literary Digest reported that ...

I n early June, Henrietta told her doctors several times that she thought the cancer was spreading, that she could feel it movin ...

showed that it was attached to her pelvic wall, nearly blocking her urethra. The doctor on duty called for Jones and several oth ...

etta’s feet in stirrups once again, to take a few more cells from her cervix at the request of George Gey, who wanted to see if ...

Turner Station A few days after my first conversation with Day, I drove from Pittsburgh to Baltimore to meet his son, David “Son ...

everybody had known Henrietta,” he wrote. So I opened the phone book again and started di- aling, hoping I’d find one of those p ...

me drive by slowly, then kept on laughing. Turner Station is less than a mile across in any direction, its horizon lined with sk ...

the porch with the boys and wait. As I sat down, the man in the red and white ski jacket smiled a big bright smile, then told me ...

church groups, and free GED and adult literacy classes. She had dozens of “spiritual sons,” who she treated no different than he ...

put a museum together, even though the Cofield situation did cause so many problems. Terri- fied Deborah. We were supposed to be ...

video—use that rewind button, watch it twice if you have to, but don’t you miss nothing.” Then she left, locking the door behind ...

C lover sits a few rolling hills off Route 360 in southern Virginia, just past Difficult Creek on the banks of the River of Deat ...