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Black History 365 | # 229 Henrietta Lacks

May 28, 2025

This is Henrietta Lacks. Henrietta Lacks is a woman who came into John Hopkins Hospital with the issue of vaginal bleeding. It was then discovered that she had a large, malignant tumor on her cervix. She began undergoing radium treatments for her cervical cancer. She was written in history as the woman with “immortal cells.” Upon examination where other cells would die, Mrs. Lacks' cells doubled every 20 to 24 hours. This is because unlike other cancer cells, Henrietta’s cells had the extraordinary ability to divide and multiply outside of the human body — thus being dubbed “immortal." Henrietta's cells had a massive impact in blood cancer research, as they led to advancements in chemotherapy. Her cells were shared with the worldwide research community, who conducted experiments and made groundbreaking scientific discoveries. She was diagnosed with cervical cancer at 30, and Henrietta Lacks died at 31 in the “colored ward” — she was a mother of five. She passed away less than a year after her diagnosis. She was buried in an unmarked grave. What particularly ill about this is that these scientists collected cervical cancer cells of Henrietta Lacks without her consent. Her cells were then used to establish the HeLa cell line (named with the first two letters of her first and last name) which was used in several groundbreaking medical discoveries – . Now, for what would have been Henrietta Lacks’ 103rd birthday, her family, settled a lawsuit with Thermo Fisher – a multinational biotech company over the lack of ethics in consent in 2023. It don’t stop. Lordhavemercy.

Tags Black History 365
← Black History 365 | # 230 The Untreated Syphilis Torture Studies (1932-1972)Black History 365 | # 228 J. Marion Sims Statue →

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