Henrietta Lacks was 31 years old when she died of cervical cancer. Before her death, doctors at Johns Hopkins University scraped a few of her cancerous cells for future study. To their surprise, these cells outlived Ms. Lacks by decades and reproduced almost without limit. Scientists studied these cells, leading to numerous scientific breakthroughs. This all sounds wonderful until you learn that Henrietta gave no consent and had no knowledge of the use of her cells. Further, the market for these cells grew into a multi-billion-dollar business, while the Lacks family received no compensation and struggled to afford their own medical care.

Rebecca Skloot's 2010 book, "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks," tells Henrietta's story. But it also tells more. Woven within the Lacks biography is a discussion of the evolution of legal and ethical standards around consent and the use of human body parts, the scientific advances resulting from the study of these cells, the effect on the Lacks family of the cells' success, and Skloot's attempts to pull this story from a family that had grown to distrust the establishment and a white reporter.

Skloot's book raises several ethical and legal questions. What rights do scientists have to use byproducts of medical treatment, including parts of a patient's body? What privacy and monetary rights do the patients have in these situations? Most doctors, scientists, and legal scholars did not even consider these questions in 1951. Surprisingly, some questions are still unresolved more than half a century later.

Do scientific advancements justify unethical practices to attain them? History is full of examples of this. Nazis performing medical experiments on Jews in concentration camps; Army doctors conducting syphilis experiments on black men in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

"The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" is part biography, part investigative reporting story, and part human tragedy. I was unfamiliar with this part of history before picking up this book. I am glad I did.