When people ask—and seems like people always be askin to where I can't never get away from it—I say, Yeah, that's right, my mother name was Henrietta Lacks, she died in 1951, John Hopkins took her cells and them cells are still livin today, still multiplyin, still growin and spreadin if you don't keep em frozen. Science calls her HeLa and she's all over the world in medical facilities, in all the computers and the Internet everywhere.
When I go to the doctor for my checkups I always say my mother was HeLa. They get all excited, tell me stuff like how her cells helped make my blood pressure medicines and antidepression pills and how all this important stuff in science happen cause of her. But they don't never explain more than just sayin, Yeah, your mother was on the moon, she been in nuclear bombs and made that polio vaccine. I really don't know how she did all that, but I guess I'm glad she did, cause that mean she helpin lots of people. I think she would like that.
But I always have thought it was strange, if our mother cells done so much for medicine, how come her family can't afford to see no doctors? Don't make no sense. People got rich off my mother without us even knowin about them takin her cells, now we don't get a dime. I used to get so mad about that to where it made me sick and I had to take pills. But I don't got it in me no more to fight. I just want to know who my mother was.
Deborah’s Voice - Daughter of Henrietta Lacks.
I accidentally chanced upon the book - The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, when my wife picked up the book from the neighboring communal library and started raving about it. I must say it is a fascinating read where non-fiction meets science.
Published in 2010, author Rebecca Skloot delved deep into the true story behind the HeLa cells - the first immortal human cells that have been growing continuously for over 70 years in labs all over the world. What makes this story so remarkable is that those cells came from a living, breathing woman - Henrietta Lacks. Henrietta was just 31 years old in 1951 when she sought treatment for cervical cancer at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. During her medical exam, doctors took tissue samples without her knowledge or consent for research purposes.
Unfortunately, Henrietta's cancer was too advanced, and she passed away just months later, leaving behind her husband and five young children. Little did anyone know at the time, but those tissue samples taken from Henrietta would go on to revolutionize modern medicine. The cells from Henrietta's tumor grew at unprecedented rates in culture - they were immortal.
Most cells divide around 40 to 60 times before they become too old to function properly and are naturally killed off. But Henrietta was infected with Human papillomavirus (HPV) which can allow cells to divide forever because they attack the sentinels keeping uncontrolled division in check. After Lacks was infected with HPV 18, the second most common high-risk type of the virus, her cervical cells lost the ability to produce these sentinels. Without growth checks in place, her cells were able to divide indefinitely and became “immortal” – living on to this day both in test tubes and in the 70,000 studies, which it has spawned. This ability to survive through endless generations of cells is what makes them invaluable for scientists conducting experiments on human cells.
Scientists worldwide dubbed them "HeLa" cells after her initials, He and La, and they went on to become the first human cells ever successfully cloned. Without consent, these cells taken from Henrietta became the basis of countless scientific breakthroughs - from developing the polio vaccine to advancing research on cancer and AIDS, infertility treatments, cloning, genetics, and more. Her cells were sent into space and helped pave the way for in vitro fertilization, gene mapping, and cloning. Henrietta's cells have been grown and distributed to more than 11,000 labs worldwide - and all without her or her family's knowledge. No dead woman has done more for the living population than Henrietta Lacks.
Henrietta's cells had a massive impact on blood cancer research, as they led to advancements in chemotherapy – a treatment that continues to save the lives of millions of people with blood cancer.
Although Henrietta's cells were vital to medical progress for decades, what makes it truly poignant is the human story of Henrietta Lacks and her family. Skloot weaves in the narrative of the Lacks family, particularly Henrietta’s daughter, Deborah, who grapples with the legacy of her mother's cells and the scientific community that seemed to value HeLa cells more than the woman they came from. Her full legacy had been lost to history. Skloot discovered that neither doctors nor scientists had bothered to learn her name until the 1970s. For over 20 years no one informed her family or asked for their consent - her cells were bought and sold as a commodity for research. Henrietta's living descendants did not realize they had a direct relative whose cells were being grown by the billions until Skloot conducted interviews to put together the full picture. Beyond just telling Henrietta's fascinating individual story, Skloot also shined a light on important issues of medical ethics, informed consent, privacy, and racial inequality in medicine that her case brought to the surface.
It was in 1976, when Mike Rogers, a journalist prodigy first published the true story of Henrietta Lacks and her family in the edition of Rolling Stone. It was explosive news in 1976. Henrietta was a black woman born of slavery in the South, who fled north only to have her cells used as tools by white scientists without her consent. It was a story of white selling black. It was a story of cells from an uncredited black woman becoming one of the most important tools in medicine.
HeLa cells were money baggers. While John Hopkins distributed for free, other ancillary biotech companies have profited from HeLa cells. Thermo Fisher with revenues of $ 40 billion was one of them. In 2021, the descendants of Lacks finally got racial justice, when they sued Thermo Fisher and reached a confidential settlement.
Delesco a professor at the Southern University Law Center who wrote a landmark 2012 article about Lacks in the journal Annals of Health Law, and who filed an amicus brief in support of the Lacks family’s lawsuit says, “What the settlement does is add a level of humanity that has historically been overlooked,”
The settlement case of Henrietta Lacks also opened up troubling questions on the Tuskegee study, in which the U.S. Public Health Service withheld syphilis treatment from Black men, or the brutal experiments conducted on enslaved Black women by James Marion Sims, known as the “father of gynecology.”
However, a beginning has been made to correct the injustice rendered to marginalized communities in the past. Since then, Johns Hopkins University has established a memorial award and university building in her name. The World Health Organization has also bestowed a posthumous award to Henrietta Lacks for her contributions to medical science.
The story of Henrietta Lacks is best captured by a climactic passage in the book by Deborah’s husband, James Pullam.
This child will someday know that her great-grandmother Henrietta helped the world!” Pullum yelled. Then he pointed around the room at Davon and JaBrea’s other cousins, saying, “So will that child … and that child … and that child. This is their story now. They need to take hold of it and let it teach them they can change the world too.”
Each one of us can change the world too.