Includes reading group guide (pages 379-381)

Includes bibliographical references (pages 346-366) and index.

A few words about this book -- Prologue: The woman in the photograph -- Deborah's voice.

Part One: Life. The exam 1951 -- Clover 1920-1942 -- Diagnosis and treatment 1951 -- The birth of HeLa 1951 -- "Blackness be spreadin all inside" 1951 -- "Lady's on the phone" 1999 -- The death and life of cell culture 1951 -- "A miserable specimen" 1951 -- Turner Station 1999 -- The other side of the tracks 1999 -- "The devil of pain itself" 1951.

Part Two. Death. The storm 1951 -- The HeLa factory 1951-1953 -- Helen Lane 1953-1954 -- "Too young to remember" 1951-1965 -- "Spending eternity in the same place" 1999 -- Illegal, immoral, and deplorable 1954-1966 -- "Strangest hybrid" 1960-1966 -- "The most critical time on this earth is now" 1966-1973 -- The HeLa bomb 1966 -- Night doctors 2000 -- "The fame she so richly deserves" 1970-1973.

Part Three. Immortality. "It's alive" 1973-1974 -- "Least they can do" 1975 -- "Who told you you could sell my spleen?" 1976-1988 -- Breach of privacy 1980-1985 -- The secret of immortality 1984-1995 -- After London 1996-1999 -- A village of Henriettas 2000 -- Zakariyya 2000 -- Hela, goddess of death 2000-2001 -- "All that's my mother" 2001 -- The hospital for the Negro insane 2001 -- The medical records 2001 -- Soul cleansing 2001 -- Heavenly bodies 2001 -- "Nothing to be scared about" 2001 -- The long road to Clover 2009 -- Where they are now -- About the Henrietta Lacks Foundation.

Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer, yet her cells--taken without her knowledge--became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first "immortal" human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer and viruses; helped lead to in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions. Yet Henrietta Lacks is buried in an unmarked grave. Her family did not learn of her "immortality" until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. The story of the Lacks family is inextricably connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of. --From publisher description.