Rebecca Skloot
Part One of Three
A Few Words
About This Book
Prologue: The
Woman in the
Photograph
Identifications
“Egg Theory”
The Passing
The Spiritual
Connection
The Exam
The Finding of the
Cancer
Rate at Which the
Tumor Grew
Clover
Birth of Henrietta
Henrietta’s
Birthing
Marriage
Turner Station
(steel)
Diagnosis and
Treatment
HeLa— hee-lah refers to the cells grown from Henrietta’s cervix; a code name for the first immortal human cells (1)
 “Henrietta Lacks, Helen Lane or Helen Larson.” Mostly identified as
Lane, more notably known as HeLa (2)
Cytoplasm—“the yolk of an egg,” full of water and protein to keep the cell fed
(3)
Nucleus—“the yolk of an egg,” that hold genetic information (3)
Genome—inside the nucleus, tells cells when to grow and divide (3)
Mitosis—process of cell division; makes possible babies out of embryos and for our bodies to create cells to heal and replenish lost blood (3)

Henrietta passed, 1951, cervical cancer, her cells reproduced a generation in 24 hours (4)
 Lack’s family finds out about the on-living cells 25 years after fact (6)
 “Deborah believed Henrietta’s spirit lived on through her cells… ‘how else do you explain why your science teacher knew her real name…’” (7)

After birth of Joe and prolonged agony, Henrietta found blood that didn’t arrive because of menstruation; she inserted a finger into herself and found a marble-like lump to the left of the opening of her womb (14-15)

Dr. Jones notes that there was no threat of cancer at the 6 week checkup, however three months later came a tumor (17)

Henrietta was born Loretta Pleasant, in Roanoke, Virginia, Aug. 1, 1920, grew up with grandfather Tommy (Roaring Twenties) (18)
Sneak Baby—what they called David Lacks, grandson of Tommy, because he was a stillborn but gasped for breath after a 12-year-old cousin and a midwife named Munchie, patted his chest (19)

Lawrence born, Henrietta 14, 4 years later Lucile Elsie Pleasant was born, mentally ill (23)

Despite those opposed, married cousin David, April 10, 1941 (WWI) (24)

Cousin Fred gave money for Day, Henrietta, and two children to go to
Turner Station when Henrietta was 21 (26)
 “Epidermoid carcinoma of the cervix, Stage I” (27)
Carcinoma—most cervical cancers, grow from the epithelial cells that cover the cervix and protect its surface (26)

Cervical Cancer
Debate
Carcinoma Types
TeLinde’s
Treatment
Partnership of
TeLinde and Gey
Radium
“Treatment”
Taking Cell
Samples
The Birth of HeLa
Gey Inventions
HeLa Cell
Reproduction

Debate on cervical cancer, Richard Wesley TeLinde, cervical cancer expert (27)

Cervical carcinomas divided into 2 types: invasive and noninvasive (28)
Invasive Carcinomas—have penetrated the surface of the cervix (28)
Noninvasive Carcinoma—hasn’t, AKA “sugar-icing carcinoma,” because it grows in a sheet across surface of cervix, official name “carcinoma in situ” (28)
Carcinoma in Situ—Latin for “cancer in its original place” (28)

TeLinde treated both aggressively, thought carcinoma in situ was precursor to invasive, most didn’t know how to treat complications with the cervix even with the invention of Pap Smear (28-29)

George Gey and wife Margaret wanted to make immortal human cells,
TeLinde gave them supply of cervical cancer tissue to test his theory,
Henrietta’s cells were in that bunch (30)

Feb. 5, 1951, Jones told Henrietta it was malignant, goes to hospital, cancer is invasive, treated with radium (31-32)
Radium—white radioactive metal that glows blue, very bad for people (32)

Marie Curie and her finding of radium in France, surgeon Howard Kelly brought it to the US (died from her own finding) (32)
 Dr. Lawrence Wharton Jr. took two samples of Henrietta’s cervix before operating on her, then sewed a tube of radium to the outer cervix and another against that one (33)
Gey Culture Medium—liquid used for feeding cells that the Geys were trying to perfect, needed odd ingredients that led to the Gey Chicken Bleeding Technique
(35-36)
Roller-Tube Culturing Technique—George Gey’s most important invention, spun twice an hour, sometimes less, Gey believed the culture medium needed to be in constant motion (39)

Mary Kubicak finds that HeLa reproduced cells every 24 hours two days after Henrietta leaves the hospital, grew 20 times faster than Henrietta’s normal cells (40-41)
“Blackness Be
Spreadin All
Inside”
Elsie Leaves
Gonorrhea
Radiation Defect
“Lady’s on the
Phone”
Symposium and
Convincing
Pattillo
 known as the Hospital for the Negro Insane, saw her once a week (45)
 Henrietta got Gonorrhea, passed from David’s running around (48)

The radiation charred Henrietta from her chest to her pelvis (48)

Eldest daughter Elsie sent to live at Crownsville State Hospital, formally
Skloot, 27, comes across “The HeLa Cancer Control Symposium” by
Roland Pattillo who badgered Skloot who went on to talk about the
Tuskegee Syphilis Study, Mississippi Appendectomies (50)
Tuskegee Syphilis Study—called upon black people with syphilis, watched suffer and die, families were given $50 (50)
Mississippi Appendectomies—unnecessary hysterectomies of black women to stop them from reproducing and so that doctors could get practice (50)

Contacting the
Family
 Three days of badgering got Deborah Lack’s phone number, helpful hints on how to communicate with her and some information about her family
(50-51)

Deborah said her brother believed that John Hopkins killed Henrietta and experimented on her after he had stolen her medical record and autopsy papers, did 15 in Alabama (52)

Deborah then was forced to stop talking to Skloot until okayed by the father, and two brothers Lawrence and David Jr. (54)
The Death and
Life of Cell
Cultures
Immortal Chicken
Heart
Immortality for the
Masses?
Chicken Heart
Scam
“A Miserable
Specimen”
Tumors Begin to
Grow
Turner Station
Speed’s
The Other Side of the Tracks
Spirit Diseases
“The Devil of
Pain Itself”
More Tumors
Passing
Benevolent Deception—doctors often withheld information from their patients, sometimes without a diagnosis at all, common practice of the 1950s (63)
 After several complaints a doctor found a “stony hard” mass on her pelvic wall, inoperable. Later, tumors on uterus, both kidneys, urethra (64-65)

August 8, week after 31, Henrietta asked to be hospitalized, cells taken out at request of Gey but died because of the toxins not released by urination, more tumors on lymph nodes, hip bones, labia (65-66)
 Laure Aurelian, Gey’s colleague claims that Gey met with Henrietta and told her all the good that will come from her cells (66)

While driving through the station, met Reverend Jackson who led her to
Courtney Speed owner of Speed’s who showed Skloot a BBC documentary (70-76)

Jan. 17, 1912, Alexis Carrel, French surgeon at Rockefeller Institute grew an “immortal chicken heart” and invented a technique for suturing blood vessels together, heart never changed the face of medicine (58)

Word was that Carrel found way of immortality for the masses, he only wanted immortality for the “worthy” not the poor, uneducated, and nonwhite (59)

Original cells died soon after Carrel died awaiting trial for collaborating with Nazis, scientist Leonard Hayflick found that Carrel had just been replacing them with new cells when he “fed” them, no one proved,
Carrel’s assistant threw it in the trash, tarnished the idea of immortal cells
(61-62)


Meets Hector Henry “Cootie,” thinks that the doctors or a spirit gave
Henrietta a “man-made” disease (81-82)
September, tumors in diaphragm, bladder, lungs, blocked bladder, stomach swelled like 6 months pregnant (83)

Oct. 4, 1951 12:15