Friday, March 9, 2012
Prologue: The Woman in the Photograph
In this first little tidbit of the book the author, Rebecca Skloot, goes on to tell us about Henreitta and her cells. Most people have no idea who Henreitta even is, all they know is that her cells have done amazing things. If you laid all of the HeLa cells ever grown down end-to-end they could wrap around EARTH at least three times! Skloot also goes on to tell us how she became interested in Henreitta's story and how the Lacks family has affected her own. All in all from just reading these seven pages it is clear to see that this book is going to be good. The next chapters will begin to unravel the story of Henreitta Lacks, her family and her cells.
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That is remarkable that so many cells were used- they are so minuscule yet can wrap around earth a few times!! In these seven pages, does it explain why Henreitta's cells specifically were chosen- was there anything unique about her?
ReplyDeleteno it didn't say why they took hers. I think it was just a situation where they took advantage of the opportunity. in the first chapter they say that the tumor must have been growing really fast so I think that may be why they took hers. At the time scientists couldn't figure out how to keep a growing culture of cells, they always kept dying out.
ReplyDeleteThank you for answering my inquiries. Very interesting!
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