After his wife died, his father sent four-year-old Lacks and her nine siblings to live with their maternal grandfather in a log cabin in Clover, Virginia. The cabin was once slave quarters on a plantation owned by Lacks’ white great-grandfathers.
According to her family members, Lacks worked on a tobacco farm from an early age. She fed the animals, tended the garden and worked in the tobacco fields.
She attended a special black school, but in the sixth grade she had to drop out to help support her family.
Lax shared a room with her cousin, David Lax, whom she married in 1941. Their first child, Lawrence, was born when Henrietta was fourteen, and four years later they had a neurodivergent daughter, Elsie.
After their wedding, the couple moved to Baltimore and had three more children: David Jr., Deborah and Joseph. When Lacks became pregnant with another child in 1950, she felt as if a knot had been tied inside her.
In January 1951, Lax appealed to Johns Hopkins Hospital (the only hospital in their area that treated black patients)—the knot in her stomach began to intensify. Doctors diagnosed her with cervical cancer.
Lacks was treated with radium tubes, small bags of radium tubes sewn into the inside of her cervix. Without the patient’s permission or even knowledge, the surgeon took two tissue samples from her – one healthy and one with cancer cells.
Years later, the Lacks family filed a lawsuit in which they accused white doctors from Johns Hopkins University that in the 1950s they preyed on poor black women with cervical cancer by cutting out tissue samples without their knowledge or consent.
There was nothing unusual about this. Traditionally, healthcare providers in the United States have performed numerous experiments on black people without their consent.
George Otto Gay, a cancer researcher then at Johns Hopkins University, discovered that unlike most cells, which lived for only a few days, Lacks cells were not only much more durable, but also multiplied indefinitely. These cells were nicknamed “HeLa cells” in honor of Henrietta Lacks.
Because HeLa cells could divide several times without dying, they came to be called “immortal.” Lacks cell samples have played a crucial role in modern medicine, including the development of a polio vaccine, genetic mapping and even COVID-19.
On October 4, 1951, Lacks died at Johns Hopkins Hospital at the age of 31. An autopsy showed that the cancer had spread throughout the body. She was initially buried in an unmarked grave in the family cemetery. And in 2010, a tombstone was installed with the inscription:
“In loving memory of a phenomenal woman, wife and mother who influenced the lives of many people. Henrietta Lacks (HeLa) rests here. Her immortal cells will continue to help humanity forever,” the tombstone reads.
Despite the enormous impact Lacks’ tissue sample had on medical research, her family was never later compensated, even though companies made billions of dollars from the sale of her cells.
Lacks’ heirs sued a pharmaceutical company that used her cells for profit without their consent.
This year, more than seventy years after doctors at Johns Hopkins University took Lacks’ cells, her descendants settled the claim against the company. This news appeared on August 1 – the anniversary of her birthday.
2023-09-11 14:48:49
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