Born in August of 1920, Henrietta Lacks was an African-American woman born in a poor tobacco farming family in Roanoke, Virginia. When Henrietta’s mother died when Henrietta was just four, her father took her and her nine siblings to live on their grandparents’ farm.
As a result, Henrietta was largely brought up by her grandfather — who also cared for her cousin David Lacks at that time. When Henrietta reached of twenty, she married David on April 10, 1941. Prompted by a relative, Day ventured north to Maryland to work at Bethlehem Steel’s Sparrows Point steel mill. Shortly after, Henrietta and their children followed Day to Turner Station, Maryland, an African-American neighborhood near Baltimore.
Before bearing her fifth child, the thirty-one-year-old Henrietta noted a “knot in her womb”. She turned to her local doctor, who was clueless about her condition, suggesting Henrietta consult a specialist instead. As a result, Henrietta and her husband took the twenty-mile trip to John Hopkins Hospital, one of the few hospitals with a “colored ward”. Upon arrival, she deliberated with the gynecologist Dr. Howard Jones, who discovered a malignant tumor on her cervix. He diagnosed her with cervical cancer.
In the next eight months, Henrietta received radium treatment, which was considered the “standard of care” at the time. While receiving treatment, a surgeon Lawrence Wharton Junior, obtained two pieces of tissue from her cervix. A researcher named Mary Kubicek processes Henrietta’s cells, labeling them HeLa. Quite immediately, the cells drew notice. Unlike any other human cell, the HeLa cells didn’t seem to die in the laboratory. Instead, they seemed to thrive and multiply, doubling every twenty to twenty-four hours.
The researchers, Mary Kubicek and George Otto Gey understood the monumental application of the HeLa cells. The cells could be used in experimentation to determine cellular mechanisms, cellular structures, and most importantly, drug efficacy. Before HeLa cells, doctors would have only one opportunity to experiment on a cell line, for typical cells would tend to expire quickly.
With the news of the HeLa cells spreading rapidly, Dr. Gey began distributing the cells across the world. Around the same time, Henrietta succumbed to her cancer. Due to the success of her HeLa cells, Dr. Guy requested permission from Mr. Lacks to perform an autopsy, which was simply a guise to collect more cells.
In 1952, Henrietta’s HeLa cells were used to develop a vaccine for polio at Tuskegee University, where an entire laboratory was dedicated to the research in such cells. Not long after, many companies sought to commercialize HeLa cells. Researchers could purchase her cell lines for a fee. By 2001, her cells had been used in over 75,00 trials.
However, during the entire ordeal, Henrietta’s family never knew of the origin of the HeLa cells. It was only in 1973, when Babette Lacks, the daughter-in-law of Henrietta, encountered a National Institute of Health official at a cocktail party. Upon discussing the NIH official’s work, it was revealed to the Lacks family that the HeLa cells originated from Henrietta.
Though Johns Hopkins never received informed consent from the Lacks family, there is evidence that the sampling procedures were the custom at the time. Johns Hopkins has also issued this statement on Henrietta Lacks: “Having reviewed our interactions with Henrietta Lacks and with the Lacks family over more than 50 years, we found that Johns Hopkins could have – and should have – done more to inform and work with members of Henrietta Lacks’ family out of respect for them, their privacy and their personal interests. Though the collection and use of Henrietta Lacks’ cells in research was an acceptable and legal practice in the 1950s, the bioethical laws protecting research subjects have evolved.”
Recently, the Lacks family reached a settlement in 2023 with Thermo Fisher Scientific, a Massachusetts technology firm, over the usage of HeLa without consent.
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Henrietta Lacks. Narrated by Devan Stahl and Tyler Gibb, Bioethics for the People, 2023.
Hernandez, Joe. “Henrietta Lacks’ descendants reach a settlement over the use of her ‘stolen’
cells.” NPR, 1 Aug. 2024, www.npr.org/2023/08/01/1191283359/
henrietta-lacks-descendants-settlement-stolen-cells. Accessed 4 May 2024.
Johns Hopkins Medicine. www.hopkinsmedicine.org/henrietta-lacks. Accessed 4 May 2024.
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