Henrietta Lacks died in 1951, aged 31, of an aggressive cervical cancer. Months earlier, doctors at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, had taken samples of her cancerous cells while diagnosing and treating the disease. They gave some of that tissue to a researcher without Lacks’s knowledge or consent. In the laboratory, her cells turned out to have an extraordinary capacity to survive and reproduce; they were, in essence, immortal. The researcher shared them widely with other scientists, and HeLa cells went on to become a cornerstone of modern medicine, enabling countless scientific and medical innovations, including the development of the polio vaccine, genetic mapping and even COVID-19 vaccines.
Lacks was a Black woman. The hospital where her cells were collected was one of only a few that provided medical care to Black people. The family was traumatized by this revelation and have sought legal action; however, they are yet to receive compensation from biotechnology or other companies that profited from her cells. For decades after her death, doctors and scientists repeatedly failed to ask her family for consent as they revealed Lacks's name publicly, gave her medical records to the media, and even published her cells' genome online.