24.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
By Rebecca Skloot
Because we would have never known
the truth without it.
Henrietta Lacks was a poor, Southern tobacco
farmer, yet her cells—taken without her knowledge—became
one of the most important tools in medicine. From the "colored" ward
of Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s, her cells played a role in developing
the polio vaccine, uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses and the effects of the
atom bomb. Still today, her cells are leading to important advances like in
vitro fertilization, cloning and gene mapping.
— Dawn Raffel
