Here’s the compelling story of how a young Rolling Stone writer tracked
down and published the identity of a then-anonymous cell donor, now
known to millions of readers from Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of
Henrietta Lacks. As Rebecca describes, back in 1976, a very young
science writer was the first to locate the Lacks family and explain to
them Henrietta’s remarkable role in biomedicine. This is the story of
how that happened.

She was only known as “Helen Lane” (the
pseudonym for Henrietta that the researchers used in public), but her
apparently immortal cells had already started to earn an enormous place
in science. Michael Rogers, then a staff writer for the rock and roll
magazine, wanted to bring it to life by actually finding her surviving
relatives and paint a portrait of “Helen” herself.

It seemed
like a long-shot at best, and in fact nearly proved impossible. Back in
the Seventies, the biomedical community controlled information far more
closely than today. Plus, the unspoken rules of science writing at the
time made printing a tissue donor’s real name ethically dubious.
Ultimately, through a single slip of the tongue by a researcher, Rogers
was able to find the family—as they were on the very first step of the
difficult journey that Rebecca so ably chronicles in her book.

This
8,000 word ebooklet describes Rogers’ efforts to find Henrietta
Lacks—within the particular opportunities and challenges of journalism
in the Seventies—and also includes the text of the original 1976
article.