Rebecca Skloot Quotes

“Like many doctors of his era, TeLinde often used patients from the public wards for research, usually without their knowledge. Many scientists believed that since patients were treated for free in the public wards, it was fair to use them as research subjects as a form of payment.”

“With the ability to identify genes from a blood sample or even a single cell, the risk of a blood draw was no longer just a minor infection or the pain of a needle stick—it was that someone could uncover your genetic information. It was about a violation of privacy”

“He dreamed of never-ending life for those he deemed worthy, and death or forced sterilization for everyone else. He’d later praise Hitler for the “energetic measures” he took in that direction”

“If the whole profession is doing it, how can you call it ‘unprofessional conduct’?”

“Voodoo,” [Cootie] whispered. “Some peoples sayin Henrietta’s sickness and them cells was man- or woman-made, others say it was doctor-made.”

“David drove Henrietta nearly twenty miles to get [to Hopkins], not because they preferred it, but because it was the only major hospital for miles that treated black patients. This was the era of Jim Crow—when black people showed up at white-only hospitals, the staff was likely to send them away, even it if meant they might die in the parking lot”

“Everybody always saying Henrietta Lacks donated those cells. She didn’t donate nothing. They took them and didn’t ask...What really would upset Henrietta is the fact that Dr. Gey never told the family anything—we didn’t know nothing about those cells and he didn’t care.”

“The Geys were determined to grow the first immortal human cells: a continuously dividing line of cells all descended from one original sample, cells that would constantly replenish themselves and never die”

“At some point, Zakariyya noticed an ad seeking volunteers for medical studies at Hopkins, and he realized he could become a research subject in exchange for a little money, a few meals, sometimes even a bed to sleep on. When he needed to buy eyeglasses, he let researchers infect him with malaria to study a new drug”

“In that moment, reading those passages, I understood completely how some of the Lackses could believe, without doubt, that Henrietta had been chosen by the Lord to become an immortal being. If you believe the Bible is the literal truth, the immortality of Henrietta’s cells makes perfect sense.”

“The research subjects didn’t ask questions. They were poor and uneducated, and the researchers offered incentives: free physical exams, hot meals, and rides into town on clinic days, plus fifty-dollar burial stipends for their families when the men died”

“I don’t want to be immortal if it mean living forever, cause then everybody else just die and get old in front of you...But maybe I’ll come back as some HeLa cells like my mother, that way we can do good together out there in the world.”

“It was a story of white selling black, of black cultures “contaminating” white ones with a single cell in an era when a person with “one drop” of black blood had only recently gained the legal right to marry a white person. It was also the story of cells from an uncredited black woman becoming one of the most important tools in medicine.”

“Everybody say she was real nice and cooked good. […] She liked takin’ care of people […] I mean, people always say she was really just hospitality, you know, fixin everything up nice, make a good place, get up, cook breakfast for everybody, even if it’s twenty of them.”

“Deborah and Zakariyya stared at the screen like they’d gone into a trance, mouths open, cheeks sagging. It was the closest they’d come to seeing their mother alive since they were babies.”

“All this stuff I’m learning,′ she said, ‘it make me realize that I did have a mother, and all the tragedy she went through. It hurts but I wanna know more, just like I wanna know about my sister. It make me feel closer to them, but I do miss them. I wish they were here.”

“We all black and white and everything else—this isn’t a race thing. There’s two sides to the story, and that’s what we want to bring out. Nothing about my mother is truth if it’s about wantin to fry the researchers. It’s not about punish the doctors or slander the hospital. I don’t want that.”

“Scientists are using technology her cells helped to develop to grow other people’s corneas.” “That’s a miracle,” Sonny said. “I didn’t know about that, but the other day President Clinton said the polio vaccine is one of the most important things that happened in the twentieth century, and her cells involved with that too.” “That’s a miracle,” Lawrence said.”

″[…] I’m glad He sent you,” she said, pointing to the sky. “This story just got to be told! Praise the Lord, people got to know about Henrietta!”

“Hennie made life come alive—bein with her was like being with fun...Hennie just love peoples. She was a person that could make the good things come out of you.”