Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine.
Henrietta Pleasant married her first cousin, David "Day" Lacks (1915–2002), in Halifax County, Virginia. David had already been living with Henrietta's grandfather when she moved there at age 4. Their marriage in 1941, after their first two children were born, (the first when Henrietta was just 14) surprised many in the family as they had been raised like brother and sister. After convincing David to go north to search for work, Henrietta followed in 1943, bringing their children with her. David found work at the Sparrow's Point shipyards and found a house for them on New Pittsburgh Avenue in Turners Station, now a part of Dundalk, Baltimore County, Maryland. This community was one of the largest and one of the youngest of the approximately forty historically African American communities in Baltimore County.
The couple had five children together: Lawrence (b. 1935), Elsie (b. 1939), David "Sonny" Jr. (b. 1947), Deborah (b. 1949), and Joseph (b. 1950, changed name to Zakariyya Bari Abdul Rahman). Joseph Lacks, Henrietta's last child, was born at Johns Hopkins Hospital in November 1950, just four and a half months before Henrietta was diagnosed with cancer. Elsie was described by the family as "different", "deaf and dumb" and eventually died in the Crownsville State Hospital in 1955. Years later the family learned Elsie had been abused there and may have had holes drilled in her head during experiments. Elsie had been placed there about 1950, the same timeframe Henrietta discovered she had lumps and unusual bleeding.
On February 1, 1951, just days after a march for a cure for polio in New York City, (according to Michael A. Rogers of Rolling Stone and Rebecca Skloot), Lacks visited Johns Hopkins because of a painful "knot" in her cervix and a bloody vaginal discharge. Once she got the biopsy back, she found she was diagnosed with cervical cancer, and the appearance of the tumor was unlike anything that had ever been seen by the examining gynecologist Dr. Howard Jones who, with his wife Georgeanna, would go on to found the Jones Institute for Reproductive Medicine at Norfolk, Virginia's Eastern Virginia Medical School.
Prior to receiving treatment for the tumor, cells from the carcinoma were removed for research purposes without her knowledge or permission, which was standard procedure at that time. During her second visit eight days later, Dr. George Otto Gey obtained another sample of her tumor; these cells would eventually become the HeLa immortal cell line, a commonly used cell line in biomedical research. Lacks was treated with radium tube inserts, sewn in place, a common treatment for these types of cancers in 1951. After several days in place, the tubes were removed and she was released from Johns Hopkins with instructions to return for X-ray treatments as a follow up. Lacks returned for the X-ray treatments. However, her condition worsened and the Hopkins doctors treated her with antibiotics, thinking that her problem might be complicated by an underlying venereal disease (she had neurosyphilis and presented with acute gonorrhea at one point as well). In significant pain and without improvement, Lacks returned to Hopkins demanding to be admitted on August 8 and remained until her death. Though she received treatment and blood transfusions, she died of uremic poisoning on October 4, 1951 at the age of thirty-one. A subsequent partial autopsy showed that the cancer had metastasized throughout her body. Mrs. Lacks was buried without a tombstone in a family cemetery in Lackstown. Her exact burial location is not known, although the family believes it is within feet of her mother's gravesite.
Lackstown is located in the town of Clover in Halifax County, Virginia. Lackstown is the name of the land that has been held by the (black) Lacks family since they received it from the (white) Lacks family, who had owned the ancestors of the black Lackses when slavery was legal. Many of the black Lacks family were also descendents from the white Lacks family. A row of boxwoods separates the graves of white ancestors from those of the black ancestors. The family name "Lacks" had originally been "Lax", but the spelling was later changed. For decades, Henrietta Lacks' mother has had the only tombstone of the five graves in the family cemetery in Lackstown.
The couple had five children together: Lawrence (b. 1935), Elsie (b. 1939), David "Sonny" Jr. (b. 1947), Deborah (b. 1949), and Joseph (b. 1950, changed name to Zakariyya Bari Abdul Rahman). Joseph Lacks, Henrietta's last child, was born at Johns Hopkins Hospital in November 1950, just four and a half months before Henrietta was diagnosed with cancer. Elsie was described by the family as "different", "deaf and dumb" and eventually died in the Crownsville State Hospital in 1955. Years later the family learned Elsie had been abused there and may have had holes drilled in her head during experiments. Elsie had been placed there about 1950, the same timeframe Henrietta discovered she had lumps and unusual bleeding.
On February 1, 1951, just days after a march for a cure for polio in New York City, (according to Michael A. Rogers of Rolling Stone and Rebecca Skloot), Lacks visited Johns Hopkins because of a painful "knot" in her cervix and a bloody vaginal discharge. Once she got the biopsy back, she found she was diagnosed with cervical cancer, and the appearance of the tumor was unlike anything that had ever been seen by the examining gynecologist Dr. Howard Jones who, with his wife Georgeanna, would go on to found the Jones Institute for Reproductive Medicine at Norfolk, Virginia's Eastern Virginia Medical School.
Prior to receiving treatment for the tumor, cells from the carcinoma were removed for research purposes without her knowledge or permission, which was standard procedure at that time. During her second visit eight days later, Dr. George Otto Gey obtained another sample of her tumor; these cells would eventually become the HeLa immortal cell line, a commonly used cell line in biomedical research. Lacks was treated with radium tube inserts, sewn in place, a common treatment for these types of cancers in 1951. After several days in place, the tubes were removed and she was released from Johns Hopkins with instructions to return for X-ray treatments as a follow up. Lacks returned for the X-ray treatments. However, her condition worsened and the Hopkins doctors treated her with antibiotics, thinking that her problem might be complicated by an underlying venereal disease (she had neurosyphilis and presented with acute gonorrhea at one point as well). In significant pain and without improvement, Lacks returned to Hopkins demanding to be admitted on August 8 and remained until her death. Though she received treatment and blood transfusions, she died of uremic poisoning on October 4, 1951 at the age of thirty-one. A subsequent partial autopsy showed that the cancer had metastasized throughout her body. Mrs. Lacks was buried without a tombstone in a family cemetery in Lackstown. Her exact burial location is not known, although the family believes it is within feet of her mother's gravesite.Lackstown is located in the town of Clover in Halifax County, Virginia. Lackstown is the name of the land that has been held by the (black) Lacks family since they received it from the (white) Lacks family, who had owned the ancestors of the black Lackses when slavery was legal. Many of the black Lacks family were also descendents from the white Lacks family. A row of boxwoods separates the graves of white ancestors from those of the black ancestors. The family name "Lacks" had originally been "Lax", but the spelling was later changed. For decades, Henrietta Lacks' mother has had the only tombstone of the five graves in the family cemetery in Lackstown.
So the first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. If you could pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, they’d weigh more than 50 million metric tons—as much as a hundred Empire State Buildings. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the effects of the atom bomb; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions.
Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave.
Henrietta’s family did not learn of her “immortality” until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists investigating HeLa began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. And though the cells had launched a multimillion-dollar industry that sells human biological materials, her family never saw any of the profits. As Rebecca Skloot so brilliantly shows in her book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, the story of the Lacks family—past and present—is inextricably connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of.
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