Henrietta Lacks was a wife and mother of 5 children in Turner Station, Maryland. In 1951, Henrietta was admitted to Johns Hopkins Hospital for bleeding and abdominal pain. (Johns Hopkins being the only hospital in the area at that time that would treat African Americans.) Mrs. Lacks was diagnosed with cervical cancer, though she actually had a kind of cancer called adenocarcinoma.

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At the time, cancer treatment was what we might now consider barbaric. Mrs. Lacks endured the insertion of radium tubes into her vagina, which was a common treatment for cervical cancer and adenocarcinoma during that time. This “treatment” caused internal and external radiation burns and did not cure her cancer. She was 31 years old when she died. Her physician, Dr. Howard Jones, collected samples of both her cancerous and healthy cervical cells during her treatment. These cells came to the attention of the director of tissue culture research at Johns Hopkins, Dr. George Otto Gey, who noticed something interesting about them: unlike other kinds of cancer cells, Henrietta’s cells didn’t seem to die when removed from her body. Provided with water and nutrient growth medium, Mrs. Lacks’ cells were able to divide fast enough that they could be cultured. Dr. Gey had been trying to design a method to grow human tissue cells outside of the body, and until Henrietta, he hadn’t been able to design a method that worked.

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Using Henrietta’s cells, Dr. Gey succeeded in creating an “immortalized cell line,” a group of cells that can grow and be cultured indefinitely. These cells, known as HeLa cells (for Henrietta Lacks) have been commercially available for scientific research since the mid 1950’s and have been used in projects that birthed the polio vaccine, in-vitro fertilization, and chemotherapy treatments. They have been used in medicine to develop treatments for leukemia, influenza, hemophilia, herpes, Parkinson’s disease and others. We wouldn’t have cloning or gene mapping without HeLa cells. We wouldn’t know about chromosomes without HeLa cells. The lives that have been saved or improved by Henrietta’s immortal cells can be estimated in the hundreds of millions. The impact HeLa cells have had on our collective scientific knowledge is immeasurable. However, the importance of the impact her cells had on our collective history does not negate the fact that Henrietta Lacks and her family were treated unfairly. The way Dr. Jones acquired Mrs. Lack’s cells (without her express, written consent) was highly unethical and by current standards, it would be considered a crime.

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Currently, it is illegal to take cells or any other part of a human body for research (or other) use without getting the donor’s informed consent. However, in the 1950’s, there were no rules about consent or about how one should be consulted or compensated for use of their biological property. Despite the lucrative business Henrietta’s cells are the basis of, her family has never been compensated for the use of her cells. Her children didn’t know of the impact their mother had on both science and medicine until the 1970’s, when researchers approached them to inquire about collecting blood for further genetic study. The Lacks family now has some control over what happens with Henrietta’s genetic information, through the National Institute of Health. However, that control only applies to people seeking access to the now-sequenced genome who choose to access it legally – though NIH – and is impossible to enforce on researchers or companies who simply sequence the genome of the cells on their own.

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Henrietta Lacks’ immortal cells have been a part of some of the most important research and medical discoveries in human history. It is unforgivable that she is a barely-known footnote in our history. In celebration of Black History and in support of the elimination of the marginalization and systemic abuse of people of color, we encourage you to learn more about Henrietta Lacks and her legacy:

Link to the movie “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks”, 2017 from Amazon

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/henriettalacks/index.html

The Immortal Life

The Henrietta Lacks Foundation™

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