The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks can be compared to other works that combine science with human interest and history. Anne Faldiman's The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down similarly deals with the issues that marginalized people have faced in getting medical care. Harriet A. Washington's Medical Apartheid provides a comprehensive history of medical experimentation on African Americans, as does Dorothy Roberts' Killing the Black Body, and Siddhartha Mukherjee's The Emperor of All Maladies is a very readable and complete history of cancer and cancer treatment.
