Henrietta Lacks: Immortal Woman

Sixty years ago, a doctor took a sample of cells from a woman complaining of a lump on her womb. Within a short time, the cancer forming that lump killed the woman, but the sample became the first to survive in the lab, dividing and growing and dividing again. Suddenly doctors had a new tool -- human cells available for research and testing. Samples of Henrietta Lack's cancer cells, labeled HeLa on their labels, were sent all over the world, giving researchers tools for examining all sorts of diseases and problems concerning the human condition. The polio vaccine was tested using hundreds of thousands of samples of HeLa. Labs sprang into existence, selling samples to researchers needing human cells for analysis.

Meanwhile, Lack's family struggled without her. Her children were young; the baby not even one when she died. The eldest languished forgotten in a mental institute with horrifying conditions. No one had any idea that Henrietta's cells lived on, providing benefits (and profits) to hundreds of scientists and millions of patients. HeLa cells were so robust that any contamination of other lines usually resulted in HeLa taking over completely, meaning that accidental contact destroyed several other lines years before anyone noticed. Researchers went back to the family for samples to help identify markers for HeLa to detect other contamination, but the Lacks family only understood they were being tested for their mother's cancer; when no follow up arrived they were left in suspense and fear.

Rebecca Skloot's interest lay in both the sample and the family -- in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks">she traces both the path of the cells and the arc of the the Lacks family, from Henrietta's birth through the lives of her descendants. Poor, black, often uneducated, the family went years knowing nothing about HeLa, and then more years wondering why they saw no benefit from something so valuable their mother had given. Skloot gets in touch with Deborah Lacks, the surviving daughter, who was a toddler when her mother died. After slowly building trust, they search for more information together, Lacks wavering between paranoia that Skloot is another white usurper out to get more from the family and joy of learning more about her mother and her family. Together they uncover the fate of Deborah's older sister, and visit a lab to see HeLa cells dividing and thriving. Skloot ends with a discussion of the ethics of tissue samples, a field still confused and murky.

Although occasionally the book seemed unfocused, swerving between the often baroque troubles of Henrietta Lack's descendants and the varied uses of the millions of HeLa cells still growing, both threads held my interest, as a historical record of a huge advance and a sociological record of the prejudice against poor black patients. A.

Evolution Within: Your Inner Fish

Neil Shubin's book about tracing the history of our bodies back to single-celled microbes shows a beautiful and enduring vision of humanity and all its relatives. Your Inner Fish: A Journey Into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body starts with a personal account of an expedition that found fossils of Tiktaalik, an animal midway between a fish and a terrestrial animal. Shubin describes the differences in head type (flat vs conical), and points out how the bones of fins morph into the big bone -- two bones -- lots of blobs structure of land-living limbs.

The next chapters zoom in on the history of arms, heads (teeth were the first bones), bodies, describing how we are like other mammals, other limbed creatures, other vertebrates, other shaped animals, other multi-cellular groupings. Shubin looks at both anatomy and DNA, tracing the changes in both over the history of life. Then he looks at vision, hearing, and scent to again point out how we can judge similarities and the evolution of spectacularly complicated mechanisms. The chapters build a bit upon each other, although it's clear that Shubin is picking them to illustrate his points. His tone is clear and enthusiastic, with a mix of personal touches including stories of some of his own work and that of other scientists who pioneered the discoveries he chronicles.

It's a great overview of evolution and the scientific method, but I also treasure the little facts I gleaned along the way. I didn't know you could sieve a sponge and it would rearrange itself back together. I didn't know that the three-bone ear was a solid indicator of a mammal; probably better than hair. I hadn't thought of my body as being organized as a tube within a tube, but now I do. I understand the differences in bone structure between reptiles and mammals better, because Shubin traces the changes made and their effects. His last chapters sum up some reasons this is relevant -- why our bodies fail in some of the ways they do, why men get hernias and couch potatoes get sick. B

(This is an excellent book for my Science Book Challenge, because it is just brimful of science, both the making of and the love of.)

Random: The Drunkard's Walk

I've signed up for a Science book challenge, because Science is Cool. No, really. And I like reading (or sometimes, having read) books that connect directly to the world, instead of all books that connect through a mirror. Here's my first entry!

Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers claimed that luck was a big component of success; that most big winners just happened to be in the right place at the right time, doing the right things. That's a conclusion Leonard Mlodinow also reaches in The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives, a look at probability and randomness, and how we recognize and mistake them in daily lives.

He reviews the history of probability, which I hadn't ever really thought about. The idea of figuring out percentages and basing judgements on them is a lot newer than I realized. For one thing, if everything is an Act of God (and thinking otherwise is a sin), then there's not much use in figuring probabilities. But as math got more sophisticated, and calculus and actuaries and probability became hot topics, our understanding grew. Not that people's actions change much. Mlodinow is also interested in how we tend to judge things, and how people tend to see patterns in chaos. The gambler's fallacy is powerful -- how many people feel the urge to ride a lucky streak, or admire the "hot hands" of a sports player, or trust in the good history of a broker? Watching the Olympics, I heard an announcer mention that a skier had never had a serious accident, which was obviously a powerful jinx, and then I waved this book at the screen to rebut the jinx. And then the guy wiped out. But if he hadn't, this wouldn't be a story, right?

I like the entertaining tone, and the personal notes. When discussing variations in grades, he confesses to absent-mindedly rewriting his son's paper when asked for comments, and then noticing he had forgotten to do "save-as" at the beginning. So he just had the kid turn it in, and then to his son's smirking satisfaction only got an A-. But the point that teachers tend to grade to expectations -- good students get good grades, bad students worse ones, even when turning in the same work (sometimes literally), and that normal variation happens even in situations we'd like to think are more controlled was made without condescension. There aren't any equations that I remember, but it was a fun trip through some meaty flavors of mathematics.

Oh, and Mlodinow finds the idea that luck plays such a huge part in success comforting. The part that we control is how often we show up, so consistency and stubbornness really enhance your chances, and anyone can come up with those. B+