I think there are many reasons for the story of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks to be heard by the public. For one, when I read about the uses of Lacks’ DNA cells, I was astonished by what her cells have been used for. The fact that this woman, who is deceased, had her cells taken to find cures in medicine such as the polio vaccine and other great discoveries, was unknown to me, and to much of the public. It is also important for the public to know this story because Henrietta Lacks did not give permission for scientists to take her cells and use them for science. It poses the ominous question of whether or not we own the cells we are made of. Personally, I believe we do. As the cells being part of her body, they are hers and no one else’s. So the scientists that took her cells should not have been allowed to, or should have asked her for them. She received none of the profit from all of the breakthroughs in medicine her cells gave the world, and neither did her children. This also poses another question of whether her children, since they have her DNA, should be profiting from their mother’s cells, since her cells sparked a multi-million dollar industry.
I think a major challenge facing Skloot while writing this book was that the general public had little to no knowledge of this story. The story is extremely interesting, but without any prior knowledge to this material, the novel might not be successful. So Skloot had to be able to give the audience all of the details of what happened, while still keeping the flow of the story.
A major challenge to me as a reader will be to be non-biased while reading this story. I already have an opinion on whether or not you own the cells of your body, as I said above, so keeping an open mind throughout this book will be a challenge.
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