"Least They Can Do" (1975)
- Skloot recounts the story of that famous Rolling Stone article written by Michael Rogers.
- After finding out Henrietta's correct name, Rogers looked up the Lacks family in the Baltimore phone book. When he met the family, they had more questions than he did.
- Rogers found himself explaining some very basic things about Henrietta's cells to them (no, they weren't going to be immortal just because HeLa cell cultures were).
- He realized that they knew nothing about what happened to their wife and mother or why she was so important to science.
- Deborah seemed distraught, but the boys were okay with knowing that their mother's cells were helping others.
- Until, that is, they learned that HeLa cells were being sold for serious money.
- They guessed that Gey and Hopkins stole Henrietta's cells so they could make lots of money.
- This turned out not to be true: Gey didn't make a dime from HeLa, since he freely gave the cells away before doing his own research. And there was no evidence that Hopkins profited either.
- Skloot tells us the going rate for HeLa cells at the time of publication: around $256 per vial.
- Although the Lacks boys didn't know exact numbers, they were angry that people made money off their mother and they saw none of it.
- They tried to start a grassroots movement to demand their due from Hopkins.
- But Deborah was after something different: she just wanted to understand. She tried to read some science books so that she understood about her mother's cells.
- Skloot includes Deborah's diary entry from this time. It reflects silent suffering on her part and a yearning to know the mother she lost. Also, there's a sense of betrayal about Hopkins' actions.
- Michael Roger's Rolling Stone article was published at the right time, not long after the misdeeds of the Tuskegee Institute experiments were made public.
- The racial overtones of the story caught people's interest.
- And then McKusick and Hsu published the genetic information of the Lacks family in the journal Science, clearly without the consent of the family and with no attempt to keep their identities private.
- This kind of thing is highly illegal and unethical today, but the Lackses didn't have legal recourse back in the day.
- Skloot tells us that a legal case would soon arise that would change the game entirely.