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The Undying Gift: Henrietta Lacks
Paperback
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Publisher: Michael Webster
Published: Jan 20 2026
Pages: 178
Weight: 0.47
Height: 0.41 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.50
Language: English
Her cells are everywhere. They ended polio, mapped the human genome, and underpin nearly every medical breakthrough of the last seventy years. They are known simply as HeLa.
But who was Henrietta Lacks?
She was a poor Black tobacco farmer and mother of five, treated in a segregated ward in 1951. When doctors took a tissue sample without her knowledge or consent, they created the world's first immortal human cell line-and initiated a tragedy of exploitation.
For decades, the biomedical industry grew rich on HeLa's endless replication, while Henrietta's children struggled in poverty, tormented by the knowledge that a part of their mother was alive and circulating globally.
This groundbreaking history unearths the full, unexpurgated story of a staggering scientific triumph built upon a profound moral crime. It chronicles the Lacks family's courageous, decades-long fight for truth, dignity, and justice. This is an essential reckoning with the dark history of medicine and the powerful, immortal legacy of the woman who changed the world. Approx.178 pages, 35400 word count
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