Henrietta Lacks
gigatos | February 7, 2022
Summary
Henrietta Lacks (Roanoke, August 1, 1920 – Baltimore, October 4, 1951) was an American woman who was an unwitting donor of cancer cells, kept in culture by scientist George Otto Gey to create the first immortal cell line in history. This cell line, used in medical research, is now known as HeLa, and under certain conditions can reproduce indefinitely. This has made its cells famous and essential in scientific circles. However, Henrietta”s person was ignored by the medical community for decades.
Henrietta was born Loretta Pleasant on August 1, 1920 in Roanoke, Virginia, the daughter of Eliza and Johnny Pleasant. It is not known for sure why her name was changed from Loretta to Henrietta, but her nickname from childhood was Hennie. When Henrietta was four years old in 1924, her mother died in childbirth of her tenth child. Unable to raise the children alone with the death of his wife, Johnny moved with his family to a small town called Clover, where the children were distributed to the homes of other relatives. Henrietta ended up at the home of her grandfather, Tommy Lacks, in a two-room cottage that had once been the quarters for enslaved blacks on a plantation that now belonged to her grandfather and great-uncle. There she shared a room with her 9-year-old cousin and future husband, David Lacks (1915-2002).
Like many of her relatives in Clover, Henrietta ended up working on the tobacco plantation on the family farm from an early age. In 1935, when Henrietta was only 14 years old, she gave birth to her first son, Lawrence Lacks. In 1939, her daughter Elsie Lacks (1939-1955) was born. Both children were the daughters of David Lacks. Elsie was born with developmental problems and was considered by her family to be “different” or “deaf and dumb.”
On April 10, 1941, David and Henrietta were married in Halifax County. Later that year, a cousin of the family, Fred Garrett, convinced the couple to leave the tobacco farm and move to Maryland, where Henrietta could work at Bethlehem Steel, a steel mill. Soon after, they moved to Maryland, but Fred was drafted to fight in World War II. With her cousin Fred”s savings, Henrietta was able to buy a house in the Turner Station neighborhood, one of the oldest black communities in Baltimore at the time.
Living in Baltimore, Henrietta and David had three more sons: David “Sonny” Lacks Jr. (1949-2009) and Joseph Lacks (1950). Her last son was born at Johns Hopkins Hospital in November 1950, four and a half months before she was diagnosed with cervical cancer.
Also read, biographies – Madame de Pompadour
Diagnosis and treatment
On January 29, 1951, Henrietta was admitted to Johns Hopkins Hospital, the only hospital in the area that treated black patients, because she felt a “lump” in her belly. She had already told her cousins about this lump and assumed, correctly, that she was pregnant. But after giving birth, Henrietta started having several hemorrhages. The doctor first tested her for syphilis, which came back negative, and so referred her to Johns Hopkins. There, doctor Howard W. Jones, MD, ordered a biopsy of the mass on Henrietta”s cervix to be studied in the laboratory.
Henrietta was then treated with internal radiation therapy while she was hospitalized and was discharged a few days later with a recommendation to return for further treatments. While continuing with radiation therapy, two samples of her cervix were collected without her knowledge or permission; one was healthy tissue and the other was tumor tissue. The samples were sent to George Otto Gey, MD, a cancer researcher at Johns Hopkins Hospital.
Also read, biographies – John Steinbeck
Death and Burial
On August 8, 1951, Henrietta, then 31, checked herself into Johns Hopkins for another round of treatment and radiation therapy sessions, but arrived with severe abdominal pain. She received several blood transfusions and remained in the hospital until her death on October 4, 1951. A partial autopsy indicated that the cancer had metastasized throughout her body.
Henrietta was buried in an unmarked grave in a family cemetery in Lackstown, Halifax County, Virginia. Lackstown is the name the area was given in Clover, which was originally owned by white people and former slaves before the War of Secession. Subsequent generations bequeathed the land to members of the Lacks family, descendants of the enslaved blacks who lived there.
The exact location of the grave is unknown, but some family members believe it to be just a few feet from Henrietta”s mother”s grave, which for decades was the only grave marked by a headstone at the site. In 2010, Roland Pattillo, who worked with George Gey and knew the Lacks family, donated a headstone for her grave. It was made in the form of a book and the epigraph was written by his grandchildren, which reads:
George Otto Gey, the first researcher to study Henrietta”s cancer cells, realized that they had a unique feature, which was that they reproduced at an abnormally high rate and could be kept alive for a long time for further analysis. At the time there was a search for cells in culture that would survive long enough to have applications in research and medicine.
Two characteristics make HeLa cells special: The first is that they divide very quickly. Even among tumors, HeLa cells divide at a much higher rate. The second is the enzyme telomerase, which is activated during cell division. Normally, it is the gradual shortening of telomeres, a small portion of DNA at the end of the chromosome, that prevents cells from dividing indefinitely. But telomerase is activated in HeLa cells, rebuilding the telomeres upon cell division, which allows indefinite multiplication. HeLa cells are not only the only immortal human cell line, they were also the first to be discovered.
Until then, cells grown in the laboratory lived for only a few days, which was not long enough to perform different tests and analyses on samples. Henrietta”s cells, however, were the first to demonstrate virtually immortal cell division. After Henrietta”s death, George and Mary Kubicek, his assistant, harvested more cells from her body, stored in the hospital morgue.
Using a culture method that he created himself, George kept the cells warm, allowing them to grow and multiply by isolating a single cell that multiplied repeatedly, which meant that it was always the same cell in culture and could be used in a variety of experiments. The method was used to develop the polio vaccine, created by Jonas Salk and John Enders. They became known as HeLa cells, because George”s lab assistant identified the samples using the first two letters of the patients” first and last names.
The ability to produce HeLa cells rapidly in the laboratory led to important discoveries and revolutions in medicine. In 1954, Jonas Salk”s vaccine began to be tested and mass-produced with Henrietta cells. Virologist Chester M. Southam injected HeLa cells into cancer patients and healthy individuals to observe whether cancer could be transmitted from person to person and to examine any immunity and immune system response to cancer.
George would mail samples of HeLa cells to scientists around the world for research of all kinds: cancer, effects of radiation on living tissue, genetic mapping, infectious diseases, and countless other applications. HeLa cells were successfully cloned in 1955 and have since been used to test human sensitivity to a wide variety of products, drugs, and chemical compounds. Since 1950, scientists have produced more than 20 tons of HeLa cells and more than 11,000 patents have been registered involving their cells.
In the early 1970s, a large amount of cells in culture became contaminated with HeLa cells. Thus, several members of Henrietta”s family received requests for blood tests from various scientists, hoping to understand the family genetics and thus differentiate the HeLa cells from other cell lines. Confused and frightened by the request, several family members began to question the scientists” request. In 1975, the family discovered that material from Henrietta had, since the time of her death, been used in medical research. The family never discussed Henrietta”s illness and death among themselves in the following years, but the request from the scientists began to raise questions about her illness and her genetics.
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Consent and Privacy
Neither Henrietta nor her family gave the doctors any permission to harvest her cells, except for the biopsy. At the time, permission to harvest was not even asked for or even considered, and the cells have been used in medical and commercial research to this day. There is much discussion about how much the racism of society and the medical profession influenced the way she was treated, the lack of consent for cell harvesting and the lack of public recognition of her contribution, even if unintentional.
In the 1980s, the family”s medical records were published without their consent. A similar case was taken all the way to the California Supreme Court (Moore v. University of California deans) in 1990 and the court ruled that discarded tissues and cells are not property and can thus be commercialized.
In March 2013, researchers published the genome DNA of a HeLa cell line, but the family only learned about it when writer Rebecca Skloot, who was researching Henrietta”s life, told them. The family objected that genetic information and people were published and freely accessible. One of Henrietta”s grandchildren said that the main concern is for the privacy of family members, the type of information that was available and what kind of data they might get in sequencing her DNA that could involve her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. An agreement was reached with the Lacks family in August 2013 with the National Health Foundation to give them control over some information from the genetic sequencing of cells discovered in two independent papers. In addition, two family members sit on a committee aimed at regulating access to the data.
In 1996, Morehouse School of Medicine held its first HeLa Women”s Health Conference, chaired by physician Roland Pattillo, where due recognition was given to Henrietta Lacks for her cells and the valuable contributions of the African American community to medical research and clinical practice. The mayor of Atlanta declared the date of the first conference, October 11, 1996, as Henrietta Lacks Day.
In 2010, the Johns Hopkins Institute for Clinical and Translational Research instituted a lecture series in honor of Henrietta and the global impact of her cells for medicine and health research. In the 2018 round of lectures, the university announced that the new medical research campus building would be named in honor of Henrietta Lacks.
In 2011, Morgan State University in Baltimore awarded Henrietta a posthumous honorary doctorate for public service. Also in 2011, the Evergreen School District in Vancouver, Washington, named its new health-focused high school Henrietta Lacks Health and Bioscience High School, becoming the first organization to formally name a school in her honor. In 2014, she was inducted into the Maryland Women”s Hall of Fame.
A dwarf planet in the asteroid belt was named 359426 Lacks in his honor in 2017. In 2018, a posthumous obituary was published by The New York Times as part of his neglected history and historical characters project. Also in 2018, The National Portrait Gallery in Washington and the National Museum of African American History and Culture announced a joint action in producing portraits of Henrietta at the hands of illustrator Kadir Nelson. In October 2018, Johns Hopkins University announced its plans to name a new research building in Henrietta”s honor.
In 2021, a statue of Henrietta Lacks was unveiled at the University of Bristol by sculptor Helen Wilson-Roe.
The first time the public heard the name Henrietta Lacks and her connection to HeLa cells was in two articles in the Detroit Free Press in March 1976 In 1998, Adam Curtis directed a documentary for the BBC about Henrietta, entitled The Way of All Flesh.
The case of Henrietta Lacks was contacted by Rebecca Skloot in the book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, released in Brazil by Companhia das Letras, translated by Ivo Korytowski. Rebecca did extensive research on the cells and the Lacks family, publishing two articles in 2000. The book was later adapted for television by the HBO channel in 2017 under the title The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, directed by George Wolfe, starring actresses Oprah Winfrey in the role of Deborah Lacks and Rose Byrne in the role of writer Rebecca Skloot. Henrietta Lacks” name was mentioned in the movie Project Power (2020), in which the villain tries to justify using a person”s biological material against their will, for other people”s interests.
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