The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

This chapter covers 1980-1985. The Lacks family members continue with their daily lives. After several years of struggling as a single mother, Deborah gets married again to mechanic James Pullum, who has also just started working as a preacher. Deborah’s son Alfred, now in his late teens, has become a drug addict who regularly gets in trouble with the law. Sonny, too, has been imprisoned for drug dealing, while Zakariyya has been released from prison several years early, though he still struggles with anger. He cannot hold down a job and survives by volunteering for paid medical research, though his change of name means that his identity as Henrietta Lacks’ son remains unknown.

In 1985, Deborah comes across a copy of a book about HeLa contamination, Michael Gold’s A Conspiracy of Cells: One Woman’s Immortal Legacy and the Medical Scandal It Caused. The book publishes details from Henrietta’s medical records, along with a photo of her. No one had asked for the family’s permission, and no one knows how Gold had access to the records or the photo. Most devastating of all for Deborah is the detailed information about the pain Henrietta suffered during her final days.