The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (Rebecca Skloot)

This book is half science, half biography. The science part is about the HeLa cell line, made up of the only human cells that grow robustly and eternally in culture. They are cervical cancer cells, and they are enormously valuable to medicine.They can easily be grown to test how diseases work and find cures, how radiation and chemicals attack cell functions, and just generally how cells work. The biography part is about Henrietta Lacks, the poor uneducated black woman whose fatal tumor yielded the sample that started the whole HeLa cell line, and her family. The author describes them in brutal and tender detail, including the violence and ignorance of their lives as well as the faith and courage. She does a marvelous job of blending the two halves, so that each of them is strengthened by the other. I very much enjoyed it.