Henrietta Lacks (1920-1951), mother of five, was a Black woman from the US whose cells, called HeLa cells, are used worldwide in medical research. They have helped to give us vaccines, chemotherapy, in vitro fertilization, and a far better understanding of cancer, disease, and, most of all, cells, the building blocks that every living creature is made out of.
In 1951, after giving birth to her fifth child, she noticed a “knot” in her womb. Her husband took her to Johns Hopkins Hospital, the nearest hospital that would take Black patients. Whites knew it as a top research hospital. Blacks knew it for doing medical experiments on unwilling Black subjects. As her daughter-in-law would later say of growing up in East Baltimore:
“When it got dark and we were young, we had to be on the steps or Hopkins might get us.”
The knot in Lacks’s womb was cancer. And it was spreading quickly. The pain was too much even for the morphine. In all that pain, the doctor leaned over and told her on her death bed, “Your cells will make you immortal”, saving countless lives. She smiled and said she was glad her pain would come to some good for someone.
HeLa cells: That doctor, Dr George Gey, had studied the cancer cells that were killing her. They were unlike any human cells ever seen before: they grew easily outside of the body and lived forever, not just for a few days. That made HeLa cells (named after her) way easier to study and to use in tests for new medicines. The polio vaccine was just its first success.
Her family knew none of this till 1973, over 20 years later. While her cells gave rise to a biotech industry worth billions, her own family could not always afford a doctor.
Her son Zakariyya in 2000:
“The doctors say her cells is so important and did all this and that to help people. But it didn’t do no good for her, and it don’t do no good for us. If me and my sister need something, we can’t even go see a doctor cause we can’t afford it. Only people that can get any good from my mother cells is the people that got money, and whoever selling them cells – they get rich off our mother and we got nothing.”
Taking Johns Hopkins to court is of little use: they broke no laws of the time and, since they gave away her cells for free for the good of science, they made no money from them. That was done later by other companies.
In 2013, though, her family did get some control over her genome, her genetic code. The National Institutes of Health (NIH), the US government agency that oversees medical research, will not give out her genome to researchers without the family’s knowledge and permission. There is no money in that, but for the first time they are no longer being kept in the dark.
– Abagond, 2017.
Source: mainly “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” (2010) by Rebecca Skloot; BBC (2013).
See also:
- Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment
- Dr J. Marion Sims
- Baltimore power structure
- Ben Carson – used to work at Johns Hopkins
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I will be viewing this tomorrow night it galls me this poor woman’s cells were used for research and her familiy was not compensated, She was just a disposable black woman those medical researchers thought nothing of her pain and suffering she was nothing more than a lab rat to them.
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“When it got dark and we were young, we had to be on the steps or Hopkins might get us.”
This is horrific. Just living thinking that you could possibly be kidnapped for medical experiments is horrific. We know that patients have been experimented on without their knowledge by the USA (women went to deliver babies and were sterilized, people with syphillis were deliberately allowed to progress to late stages without treatment, Guatemalans were deliberately infected with syphillis and other STDs to test treatments) so it’s not an outlandish fear.
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Mary, Did you watch it. I’ve not heard of Henrietta Lacks or HeLa cells and I’m confused. Where her cancer cells unique in structure to any others seen/studied or was it that where her cells where just the ones which happened to be studied?
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@Zoe Jordon
HeLa cells are “special” in that they stay alive and continue dividing more readily outside of a human body than most others do; they’re pretty much an immortal line that don’t get old and stop reproducing (by mitosis/cell division) as most cells do. So long after she passed her lineage of cells continue to be used for various biomedical experiments.
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The wikipedia article states that scientists have estimated to have grown 20 tons of her cells and they’re involved in 11,000 patents. That’s quite an industry.
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Danielle Young’s wonderful review on the Root
http://www.theroot.com/nothing-can-prepare-you-for-how-powerful-the-immortal-l-1794471386
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I first learned about Henrietta Lacks (HeLa Cells) while studying Psychology and had to take a general course, I chose Biology.
Normally, cells die within a few days once removed from the body. However, with HeLa cells, they do not die but instead they replicate rapidly and continue to do so, even to this day in labs across the world. Hence: “Your cells will make you immortal.”
While in the hospital at John Hopkins, doctors had her to sign a consent form for further treatment of cervix cancer, but surreptitiously removed tissue samples without telling her. (smh)
It is due to this cell line or population of cells of Henrietta Lacks that biotech companies are discovering treatment HIV/AIDS and even cures for certain diseases and raking in billions in profit, on a not so black market. Meanwhile, Henrietta’s family members are still living in poverty and have not been compensated for the unethical deeds committed by medical officials at John Hopkins, due to a family member, Henrietta, being a victim of medical thievery in front of the entire world.
Thus far, even the courts and medical the medical field as a whole, have argued that once a sample of tissue or blood is removed from you with an accompanying consent form, you are no longer the owner.
So here, certain people take mischief and subsequently make it a law or public policy to utilize against you not owning your own blood or tissue sample. You mean to tell me that not one of these scientists the world over are decent or respectable enough to compensate this woman’s family in some manner? I guess not. Damn, what a beautifully racist country we have!
http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/cellular-microscopic/hela-cell.htm
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@ blakksage
You mean,
Damn, what a beautifully racist world we have!
?
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Munubantu asked: “You mean, Damn, what a beautifully racist world we have!?
To me, the words country or world is interchangeable, therefore, either one will suffice!
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^^^the word are, in place of the word is^^^
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I would have preferred seeing Octavia Butler in the role of Henrietta Lacks daughter Deborah instead of Oprah Winfrey but the late Deborah Lacks told the author Rebecca Skloot when they were doing the research for the book she wanted Oprah to portray her. It’s still a good HBO film and i learned something about the HE LA cells that are very beneficial in medical research. Even though Mrs. Lacks suffered and died very young which was tragic and her children and family her left in the dark about the research John Hopkins were conducting.
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Mrs Lacks was going to die anyway. The tumor cells they removed/biopsied were not tissue she could use herself. It’s like someone with gangrene wanting their cut off leg back as a trophy.
Would Henrietta’s descendants want to license their matriarch’s tissue? That also seems kind of gross. How would they decide what research the cells could be used for? The cells are not Henrietta — you can’t clone her from the HeLa line (or at least not yet).
Insofar as HeLa cells are used for research purposes, they’re a tool, like a centrifuge or test tubes. If I build a boat with Makita brand power tools, I don’t pay the Makita Corporation rent or give them a share of whatever fish I catch in the boat.
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@”If I build a boat with Makita brand power tools, I don’t pay the Makita Corporation rent or give them a share of whatever fish I catch in the boat.”
Only if you own those tools free and clear.
If you stole them, like Johns Hopkins stole her cells, or excuse me, used them without her/her family’s permission, you may not necessarily owe “rent” or royalties or stock, but you owe something to the person from whom you’ve stolen.
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“Insofar as HeLa cells are used for research purposes, they’re a tool, like a centrifuge or test tubes.” Johnny Cake
I beg to differ because it’s not that cut and dry. I agree that the HeLa cells were a tool. But here, it was a stolen tool that eventually made a whole lot of white folks billions in profits. In law, they have what’s called either “receiving or selling stolen property.” By the way, they are both crimes. When the perpetrators are caught in situations like this, guess what? … they must pay the victim restitution. The same thing applies here, that woman should’ve been paid some type of restitution because what was done to her was in fact a crime.
But here, it proves that a crime in Amerika isn’t always a crime, because it also depends on who is committing the crime (rich and powerful) and the skin color of the criminal as well. Those doctors at John Hopkins were white. What they did to Mrs. Lacks was totally unethical.
Moreover, it was a crime back then and if some fool was to do the same thing today, it will still be a crime. This holds true even if they were to classify it as something for the “advancement of the medical field” or it was a “tool” for research purposes.
Furthermore, I noticed that you didn’t mention race. I have no doubt that race played a major role here because this woman was not only Black, but she was poor as well. The race factor pollinates everything in Amerika, no matter how much certain people try to deny this.
In short, it was plain and simple, medical thievery without her consent. She consented to have the treatment conducted for cancer ONLY, not to have tissue samples of her taken without her having knowledge of them doing so. Those doctors went way too far!
For goodness’ sake, where are your morals white Amerika?, (that’s IF they ever had any to begin with)
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Why is this of any substantive importance?
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@ Yogibreeze
This is my blog. I write posts on what I want. The WordPress user agreement did not bring up your name.
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Ted Slavin’s case would be a better example of how things should have been done.
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