Henrietta Lacks

#reverb12 Day 9: Your favourite book?

What was the best book you read in 2012, and why?

After I came the US, 6 months have passed. I read several books: "A Series of Unfortunate Events", "James and the Giant Peech", "BGF",  and "Matilda".
Since these books are for children, it easy to read, so I really enjoyed them.

However, the best book I read in 2012 was "The Immoral Life of Henrietta
Lacks".

(from Amazon.com)

Before I met this book in my reading class, I had not known about her at all.
The first things that came to mind when I heard the title of this book was she
must be witch or something like that. 

It is non-fiction about "HeLa cell" which came from African-American woman,
Henrietta Lacks. In 1951, The doctors took her cells without informed consent
at Johns Hopkins Hospital, and those cells never died. They have brought
enormous great achievements of medicine such as polio vaccine, DNA and 
more and more and a multimillion-dollar industry, but her family knew this
more than twenty years later. In addition, the a lot of researchers use these cells even now.

I have a lot of knowledge because my major is medicine, but I did not know
about  HeLa cells.  Without her cells, we would not get great benefit of present medicine.  On the other hand, her cells, she, and her family were sacrificed for medicine. Her cells brought the ethics of medicine, and race issue. I learned  that what I take for granted was based on what her cells had brought. 

Even if your major is not medicine, I recommend this book for all of you because I'm sure that all of us owe her cells a lot.

What was the best book you read in 2012?

If you have books that  you recommend, please let me know.