The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks The Supernatural Quotes

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Quote #10

For Deborah and her family—and surely many others in the world—that answer was so much more concrete than the explanation offered by science: that the immortality of Henrietta's cells had something to do with her telomeres and how HPV interacted with her DNA. The idea that God chose Henrietta as an angel who would be reborn as immortal cells made a lot more sense to them than the explanation Deborah had read earlier in Victor McKusick's genetics book […]. (296)

Skloot finally gets it: no amount of scientific explanation will make Deborah and the Lacks family more at peace than their own spiritual understanding of their mother's purpose on earth. However, the science does help them know that HeLa cells, even taken without consent, have made the world a better place. That makes Henrietta an agent of God in their eyes.