A vida imortal de Henrietta Lacks

A revista de livros do "The New York Times" de hoje tem na lista dos livros de não-ficção mais vendidos o livro

THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS
By Rebecca Skloot
Illustrated. 369 pp. Crown Publishers. $26

Conta a história de uma senhora com cancro a quem em 1951 tiraram células numa biópsia, que depois cultivaram sem autorização, tornando uma partte dela praticamente imortal. A recensão "Eternal Life" de LISA MARGONELLI publicada em 5 de Fevereiro começa assim:

"From the very beginning there was something uncanny about the cancer cells on Henrietta Lacks’s cervix. Even before killing Lacks herself in 1951, they took on a life of their own. Removed during a biopsy and cultured without her permission, the HeLa cells (named from the first two letters of her first and last names) reproduced boisterously in a lab at Johns Hopkins — the first human cells ever to do so. HeLa became an instant biological celebrity, traveling to research labs all over the world. Meanwhile Lacks, a vivacious 31-year-old African-American who had once been a tobacco farmer, tended her five children and endured scarring radiation treatments in the hospital’s “colored” ward."

O resto pode ser lido aqui.