Henrietta Lacks

            The seemingly immortal cell line collected from unwitting donor Henrietta Lacks in 1951 has had innumerable implications in medical ethics and science.  These ‘HeLa’ cells have gained a tremendous amount of fame without any question as to their origins.  Billions of dollars and countless medications for previously untreatable diseases such as polio, leukemia, Parkinson’s, and influenza have been derived from the HeLa line, proving their significance.  Henrietta Lacks, born in 1920, was a descendent of African American slaves and their white masters, and grew up in rural Roanoke, Virginia. Henrietta, like most of her family members, worked tirelessly as a tobacco farmer starting at an early age. Over the course of her marriage to David Lacks, Henrietta bore a total of five children, one of them only four and a half months before her diagnosis of cervical cancer at Johns Hopkins Hospital.  This common diagnosis was treated with radium tube inserts and instructions for follow up visits.  During one of these follow ups, two samples were taken from Henrietta’s cervix without her permission or knowledge and were studied extensively.