Henrietta Lacks (1920-1951) dies at 31 of cervical cancer in Johns Hopkins Hospital. Her cells are taken in a biopsy well before issues of patient consent are routine. In the lab, for the first time ever, her cells are found to reproduce indefinitely under laboratory conditions.
Identified as the immortal HeLa cell line, the cells continue to be the foundation of much medical research, including the polio vaccine, H.I.V. treatment, chemical testing without involving animals, and other medical advances. Since they were used without Lacks’ or her family’s knowledge, the extraordinary cell line has raised personal privacy and bioethical issues.
Born and raised Loretta Pleasant on a poor tobacco farm near Roanoke, VA, Lacks has a child at 14 and another three years later. She and their father, David “Day” Lacks, move to Baltimore and over the next decade Lacks has three more children. In early 1951, she goes to Johns Hopkins, the only local hospital that treats African Americans since its inception, complaining of a “knot” in her womb while pregnant. After giving birth, she has a major hemorrhage and within a few months is diagnosed with serious cervical cancer. After she dies, she is buried in an unmarked grave in a Virginia family cemetery near her mother.
Researcher George Otto Gey soon discovers that he can grow the Lacks’ cells indefinitely and they are made freely available as the HeLa cell line to researchers internationally for many projects including the development of the polio vaccine by Jonas Salk.
When Hopkins contacts Lacks family members in 1975 searching for other cell lines, the family is astounded to discover the wide usage of Henrietta’s cells. They learn that researchers have shared them broadly, and that several scientific companies now sell the cell line and have profited greatly from using them as the basis for research and effective treatments.
The family begins a suit against a pharmaceutical company and receives a settlement in 2021 for profiting from the use of the cells. Johns Hopkins Hospital has long created anxiety in the local Black community for treating African American patients as research subjects without their knowledge. Hopkins has not profited from sharing the cells and has acknowledged its failure to fully inform the Lacks family of the astounding power of the HeLa cells. It now recognizes the Lacks family contribution by naming a new research building after Henrietta Lacks.
