Henrietta Lacks

Biography Early life Henrietta Lacks was born Loretta Pleasant on August 1, 1920, Her family is uncertain how her name changed from Loretta to Henrietta, but she was nicknamed Hennie.

In 1935 Day and Henrietta had a son, called Lawrence (1935–2023), when Day was 19 and Henrietta was only 14. In 1939, their daughter Elsie (1939–1955) was born. Elsie had epilepsy and cerebral palsy

Living in Maryland, Henrietta and Day Lacks had three more children: David "Sonny" Lacks Jr. (1947–2022), Deborah Lacks (later known as Deborah Lacks Pullum, 1949–2009), and Joseph Lacks (later known as Zakariyya Bari Abdul Rahman after converting to Islam, 1950–2020). Henrietta gave birth to her last child at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore in November 1950, four and a half months before she was diagnosed with cervical cancer.

Both Lacks and her husband were Catholic.

Illness

Diagnosis and treatment On January 29, 1951, Lacks went to Johns Hopkins because she felt a "knot" in her womb. She had previously told her cousins about the "knot" and they assumed correctly that she was pregnant. But after giving birth to Joseph, Lacks had a severe hemorrhage. Her primary care doctor, William C. Wade, referred her back to Johns Hopkins. There, her doctor, Howard W. Jones, took a biopsy of a mass found on Lacks's cervix for laboratory testing. Soon after, Lacks was told that she had a malignant epidermoid carcinoma of the cervix. In 1970, physicians discovered that she had been misdiagnosed and actually had an adenocarcinoma. This was a common mistake at the time, and the treatment would not have differed.

Lacks was treated with radium tube inserts as an inpatient and discharged a few days later with instructions to return for X-ray treatments as a follow-up. During her treatments, two samples were taken from Lacks's cervix without her permission or knowledge; one sample was of healthy tissue and the other was cancerous. These samples were given to George Otto Gey, a physician and cancer researcher at Johns Hopkins. The cells from the cancerous sample eventually became known as the HeLa immortal cell line, a commonly used cell line in contemporary biomedical research. In 2010, Roland Pattillo, a faculty member of the Morehouse School of Medicine who had worked with George Gey and knew the Lacks family, donated a headstone for Lacks.

Medical and scientific research

Dividing HeLa cells in culture. The cells can be seen metaphase and telophase, different stages of cell division. George Otto Gey, the first researcher to study Lacks's cancerous cells, observed that these cells were unusual in that they reproduced at a very high rate and could be kept alive long enough in culture to allow more in-depth examination. Until then, cells cultured for laboratory studies survived for only a few days at most, which was not long enough to perform a variety of different tests on the same sample. Lacks's cells were the first to be observed that could be divided multiple times without dying, which is why they became known as "immortal". After Lacks's death, Gey had Mary Kubicek, his lab assistant, take further HeLa samples while Henrietta's body was at Johns Hopkins' autopsy facility. The roller-tube technique was the method used to culture the cells obtained from the samples that Kubicek collected. Gey was able to start a cell line from Lacks's sample by isolating one specific cell and repeatedly dividing it, meaning that the same cell could then be used for conducting many experiments. They became known as HeLa cells, because Gey's standard method for labeling samples was to use the first two letters of the patient's first and last names. and have since been used to test human sensitivity to tape, glue, cosmetics, and many other products.

Alarmed and confused, several family members began questioning why they were receiving so many telephone calls requesting blood samples. In 1975, the family also learned through a chance dinner-party conversation that material originating in Henrietta Lacks was continuing to be used for medical research. The cells were used in medical research and for commercial purposes. asking for "the full amount of [Thermo Fisher's] net profits". On July 31, 2023, Thermo Fisher Scientific settled with the Lacks family on undisclosed terms.

In February 2026, the Lacks family gained an out-of-court settlement with a second biotech company, Switzerland-based Novartis. Details of the settlement have not been made public. Lawsuits against several other drug companies are still ongoing.

Recognition

In 1996, Morehouse School of Medicine held its first annual HeLa Women's Health Conference. Led by physician Roland Pattillo, the conference is held to give recognition to Henrietta Lacks, her cell line, and "the valuable contribution made by African Americans to medical research and clinical practice". The mayor of Atlanta declared the date of the first conference, October 11, 1996, "Henrietta Lacks Day".

Lacks's contributions continue to be celebrated at yearly events in Turner Station. At one such event in 1997, then-U.S. Congressman from Maryland, Robert Ehrlich, presented a congressional resolution recognizing Lacks and her contributions to medical science and research.

In 2010, the Johns Hopkins Institute for Clinical and Translational Research established the annual Henrietta Lacks Memorial Lecture Series, to honor Henrietta Lacks and the global impact of HeLa cells on medicine and research.

In 2011, Morgan State University in Baltimore granted Lacks a posthumous honorary doctorate in public service. Also in 2011, the Evergreen School District in Vancouver, Washington, named their new high school focused on medical careers the Henrietta Lacks Health and Bioscience High School, becoming the first organization to memorialize her publicly by naming a school in her honor.

In 2014, Lacks was inducted into the Maryland Women's Hall of Fame. In 2017, a minor planet in the main asteroid belt was named "359426 Lacks" in her honor.

In 2018, The New York Times published a belated obituary for her, as part of the Overlooked history project. Also in 2018, the National Portrait Gallery and the National Museum of African-American History and Culture jointly announced the accession of a portrait of Lacks by Kadir Nelson.

On October 6, 2018, Johns Hopkins University announced plans to name a research building in honor of Lacks. The announcement was made at the 9th annual Henrietta Lacks Memorial Lecture in the Turner Auditorium in East Baltimore by Johns Hopkins University President Ronald J. Daniels and Paul B. Rothman, CEO of Johns Hopkins Medicine and dean of the medical faculty of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, surrounded by several of Lacks's descendants. "Through her life and her immortal cells, Henrietta Lacks made an immeasurable impact on science and medicine that has touched countless lives around the world," Daniels said. "This building will stand as a testament to her transformative impact on scientific discovery and the ethics that must undergird its pursuit. We at Johns Hopkins are profoundly grateful to the Lacks family for their partnership as we continue to learn from Mrs. Lacks's life and to honor her enduring legacy." The building will adjoin the Berman Institute of Bioethics' Deering Hall, located at the corner of Ashland and Rutland Avenues and "will support programs that enhance participation and partnership with members of the community in research that can benefit the community, as well as extend the opportunities to further study and promote research ethics and community engagement in research through an expansion of the Berman Institute and its work."

In 2021, the Henrietta Lacks Enhancing Cancer Research Act of 2019 became law; it states the Government Accountability Office must complete a study about barriers to participation that exist in cancer clinical trials that are federally funded for populations that have been underrepresented in such trials.

In October 2021, the University of Bristol unveiled a statue of Lacks at Royal Fort House in the city. The sculpture was created by Helen Wilson-Roe and was the first statue of a black woman made by a black woman for a public space in the United Kingdom.

On October 13, 2021, the World Health Organization (WHO) presented the Director General Award to Lawrence Lacks, the son of Henrietta Lacks, in recognition of her unknowing contribution to science and medicine. Soumya Swaminathan, chief scientist at the WHO, said: "I cannot think of any other single cell line or lab reagent that's been used to this extent and has resulted in so many advances."

On December 19, 2022, it was announced that a bronze statue honoring Henrietta Lacks would be erected in Roanoke, Virginia's Henrietta Lacks Plaza, previously named Lee Plaza after Confederate General Robert E. Lee. A statue of Lee was removed from the site in the wake of the protests following the murder of George Floyd in 2020. The Lacks statue was unveiled on October 4, 2023.

On June 13, 2023, Loudoun County Public Schools Board members approved naming a new school Henrietta Lacks Elementary School in Aldie, Virginia. The school serves more than 800 students from preschool through 2nd grade and opened in August 2024.

In popular culture The question of how and whether her race affected her treatment, the lack of obtaining consent, and her relative obscurity continues to be controversial. In the medical world, this case brings up bioethical concerns with informed consent, medical records privacy, and communication with tissue donors and research participants.

The HeLa cell line's connection to Henrietta Lacks was first brought to popular attention in March 1976 with a pair of articles in the Detroit Free Press and Rolling Stone written by reporter Michael Rogers, though Rogers erroneously states her name as Helen Lane. In 1998, Adam Curtis directed a BBC documentary about Henrietta Lacks called The Way of All Flesh.

Rebecca Skloot documented extensive histories of both the HeLa cell line and the Lacks family in two articles published in 2000 and in her 2010 book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Skloot worked with Deborah Lacks, who was determined to learn more about her mother, on the book.

HBO announced in 2010 that Oprah Winfrey and Alan Ball were developing a film project based on Skloot's book, and in 2016 filming commenced. with Winfrey in the leading role of Deborah Lacks, Henrietta's daughter. The film The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks was released in 2017, with Renée Elise Goldsberry portraying Lacks. Sons David Lacks Jr. and Zakariyya Rahman and granddaughter Jeri Lacks were consultants for the film.

HBO also commissioned Kadir Nelson for an oil painting of Lacks. In 2018, the portrait was jointly acquired by the National Museum of African American History and Culture and the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery. The wallpaper in the painting is made up of the "Flower of Life" alluding to the immortality of her cells. The flowers on her dress resemble images of cell structures, and the two missing buttons on her dress symbolize her cells taken without permission.

NBC's Law & Order aired its own fictionalized version of Lacks's story in the 2010 episode "Immortal", which Slate referred to as "shockingly close to the true story" and the musical groups Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine and Yeasayer both released songs about Henrietta Lacks and her legacy.

Members of the Lacks family wrote their own stories for the first time in 2013, when Lacks's oldest son and his wife, Lawrence and Bobbette Lacks, wrote a short digital memoir called "Hela Family Stories: Lawrence and Bobbette", with first-hand accounts of their memories of Henrietta Lacks while she was alive and of their own efforts to keep the youngest children out of unsafe living environments following their mother's death.

The HeLa Project, a multimedia exhibition to honor Lacks, opened in 2017 in Baltimore at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History & Culture. It included a portrait by Kadir Nelson and a poem by Saul Williams.

HeLa, a play by Chicago playwright J. Nicole Brooks, was commissioned by Sideshow Theatre Company in 2016, with a public staged reading on July 31, 2017. The play was produced by Sideshow at Chicago's Greenhouse Theater Center from November 18 to December 23, 2018. The play uses Lacks's life story as a jumping point for a larger conversation about Afrofuturism, scientific progress, and bodily autonomy.

In the series El Ministerio del Tiempo, the immortality of her cells in the lab is cited as the precedent for the character Arteche's "extreme resistance to infections, to injuries, and to cellular degeneration. In other words to aging": that his cells are immortal.

In the Netflix original movie Project Power (2020), the case of Henrietta Lacks is cited by one of the villains of the story as an example of unwilling trials giving rise to advances for the greater good.

The JJ Doom album Key to the Kuffs (2012) includes the song "Winter Blues" that contains the lyrics "We could live forever like Henrietta Lacks cells".

Yeasayer wrote a song about Lacks, entitled "Henrietta," for their 2012 album Fragrant World.

In 2020, playwright Sandra Seaton wrote a one-woman piece titled Call Me By My Name, focusing on Henrietta Lacks. The piece was performed by actress Tracey Bonner at the 2020 Atlanta Black Theatre Festival, depicting Henrietta Lacks discussing her life and the impact she had on science, eventually demanding that people 'call me by my name' when referencing the breakthroughs made possible by the study of the tumors that ended her life.