Winner's Book Club Selection of the Week: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

"The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks," by Rebecca Skloot

Amazon Best Books of the Month, February 2010

What are her Winner Credentials?

Henrietta Lacks was a poor African American woman who died of cancer at the age of 30 in 1951. Her contribution to medical science was that so monumental that it led to the cure for polio. To find out how, you'll have to read this incredible detective story.

From Publishers Weekly

Science journalist Skloot makes a remarkable debut with this multilayered story about faith, science, journalism, and grace. It is also a tale of medical wonders and medical arrogance, racism, poverty and the bond that grows, sometimes painfully, between two very different women—Skloot and Deborah Lacks—sharing an obsession to learn about Deborah's mother, Henrietta, and her magical, immortal cells. Henrietta Lacks was a 31-year-old black mother of five in Baltimore when she died of cervical cancer in 1951. Without her knowledge, doctors treating her at Johns Hopkins took tissue samples from her cervix for research. They spawned the first viable, indeed miraculously productive, cell line—known as HeLa. read more>>

Customer Review

Wow. This book should be required reading for scientists and students of life. The true story of Henrietta Lacks and her family has finally been told, beautifully, in this book. The book encompasses science, ethics, and the story of a family who was terribly wronged in the pursuit of scientific research. I could gush about this book for pages but I'll try first to hit the main points of why this book is so remarkable in list form for the sake of brevity: read more >>

Stuff From My InBox: Laminins

A couple of days ago I was running (I use that term very loosely) on my treadmill,

watching a DVD sermon by Louie Giglio...and I was BLOWN AWAY! I want to share what I learned.....but I fear not being able to convey it as well as I want I will share anyway.

He (Louie) was talking about how inconceivably BIG our God is......how He spoke the universe into being....how He breathes stars out of His mouth that are huge raging balls of fire....etc. Etc. Then He went on to speak of how this star-breathing, universe creating God ALSO knitted our human bodies together with amazing detail and wonder. At this point I am LOVING it (fascinating from a medical standpoint, you know.) ....and I was remembering how I was constantly amazed during medical school as I learned more and more about God's handiwork I remember so many times thinking...."How can ANYONE deny that a Creator did all of this?"

Louie went on to talk about how we can trust that the God who created all this, also has the power to hold it all together when things seem to be falling apart...how our loving Creator is also our sustainer.

And then I lost my breath—and it wasn't because I was running my treadmill, either! It was because he started talking about laminin.

I knew about laminin. Here is how wikipedia describes it: 'Laminins are a family of proteins that are an integral part of the structural scaffolding of basement membranes in almost every animal tissue.'

You see...laminins are what hold us together....LITERALLY. They are cell adhesion molecules. They are what holds one cell of our bodies to the next cell.. Without them, we would literally fall apart. And I knew all this already. But what I didn't know is what laminin LOOKED LIKE.

But now I do. And I have thought about it a thousand times since (already)....

Here is what the structure of laminin looks like...AND THIS IS NOT a 'Christian portrayal' of it....if you look up laminin in any scientific/medical piece of literature, this is what you will see...

Now tell me that our God is not the coolest! Amazing. The glue that holds us together....ALL of us....is in the shape of the cross.

Immediately Colossians 1:15-17 comes to mind.

'He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created; things in heaven and on earth , visible and invisible, Whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things HOLD TOGETHER. ' Colossians 1:15-17.

Call me crazy. I just think that is very, very cool.

Thousands of years before the world knew anything about laminin, Paul penned those words. And now we see that from a very LITERAL standpoint, we are held together...one cell to another....by the cross.

You would never in a quadrillion years convince me that is anything other than the mark of a Creator who knew EXACTLY what laminin 'glue' would look like long before Adam even breathed his first breath!

Faith is not knowing what the future holds, but knowing who holds the future. I wanted you to know and to understand that YOU are being held together by the cross of Jesus Christ. His love. His forgiveness and His marvelous power. The love of God is like the ocean, you can see its beginnings, Bbut not its end.