I'm currently reading "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot. And, coincidentally, watching "Law and Order" today found out that they framed an episode around the story of Henrietta Lacks. I recommend the book highly. It tells a many layered tale of the history of human cell research in the latter half of the Twentieth Century, tied to the persons who contributed the original cell line that enabled a gargantuan volume of medical research. The events date to the early 1950s and the developing concepts of who owns genetic material. Some of this material was covered in Rolling Stone magazine in the 1970s and a BBC Documentary "The Way of All Flesh" from 2008. I think the book is an excellent source for the story and relates it well with the complex racial context that it occurs in.
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