LACKS, HENRIETTA (1 August 1920–4 October 1951), African American woman who unwittingly had an immeasurable impact on the progress of modern medicine. The “immortal” cell line known as HeLa—the first human cells to be successfully cultured in a laboratory—was derived from a sample taken from Lacks’ cervical-cancer tumor during her treatment at Johns Hopkins Hospital without her knowledge or consent. The line has subsequently been used in countless experiments that have revolutionized biomedical research, but the manner in which the line was created has since raised serious medical-ethics concerns regarding race, gender, and patient privacy.
Lacks was born Loretta Pleasant in Roanoke, Virginia (at some point during her childhood her name was changed to Henrietta). After her mother died when she was only four years old, Lacks went to live with her grandfather in his log cabin, the former slave quarters of a plantation. Like other members of her family, Lacks worked on a tobacco farm from an early age and attended the nearby Black school until she dropped out in the sixth grade to support her family full-time. At fourteen she had her first son, Lawrence, with her first cousin David Lacks. The couple’s second child, Elsie, born four years later, had cerebral palsy and epilepsy. David and Henrietta married in 1941, moved to Baltimore County in Maryland, and had three more children. Lacks had her last child, Joseph (later Zakariyya), in November 1950, just four and a half months before she was diagnosed with cervical cancer.
Lacks underwent cancer treatment at Johns Hopkins Hospital, the only medical facility in the area that provided free (albeit segregated) medical care for poor African American patients. Several months later, however, Lacks, suffering from intense abdominal pain, had to be readmitted to Johns Hopkins, where she would remain until her death from the metastasized cancer at age thirty-one. She was buried in an unmarked grave in her family cemetery in Clover, Virginia. During Lacks’ initial cancer treatment two samples were taken from her cervix without her knowledge: one contained healthy tissue, the other cancerous tissue. The samples were given to George Otto Gey, a doctor and cancer researcher at Johns Hopkins, who then authorized his assistant to retrieve more cells from Lacks’ body after her death. The cancerous cells eventually became known as the HeLa cell line—it was Gey’s practice to name cell lines with the first two letters of the source patient’s first and last names.
On the day Lacks died Gey appeared on television holding a vial of HeLa cells and claiming that the study of the first cells to survive outside the human body could lead to the eradication of cancer. Gey had been collecting cells from cervical-cancer patients for years, but the samples had all died within twenty-four hours of being removed from the body. The HeLa cells, by contrast, proved remarkably robust and prolific, doubling every twenty-four hours, and Gey observed that they could also be divided multiple times without dying, hence their designation as “immortal.”
The immortality of the HeLa cells made them invaluable for cancer research; they began to be used in labs all over the world, and the experiments their longevity permitted resulted in multiple medical breakthroughs. Researchers still use HeLa cells to develop vaccines, study viruses, test drugs, and plumb the mysteries of cancer and other diseases. In 2012 Robert J. Ursano, a professor of psychiatry and neuroscience, quantified the HeLa cells’ broad reach: “It is estimated that scientists have grown twenty tons of her cells. There are almost eleven thousand patents involving HeLa cells. HeLa cells currently live by the trillions in laboratories and biological companies all over the world. They are still robust after more than sixty years.” Countless scientific discoveries, in other words, owe their existence to Henrietta Lacks’ unknowing contribution.
Despite the profound impact of HeLa cells on medical science, Lacks’ family remained unaware of her biological legacy. Gey initially attempted to conceal Lacks’ identity by attributing the HeLa cells to a fictional “Helen Lane.” It was only after Gey died in 1970 that the truth began to emerge. Family members grew suspicious after receiving solicitations for blood samples from interested researchers (a large portion of HeLa cells had been contaminated and they needed the family’s genetic information to be able to differentiate HeLa cells from other cells), and in 1975 they learned that cells derived from Henrietta Lacks had been used in medical research for decades.
Patient-privacy laws and protections did not exist in the 1950s, and medical professionals often conducted research on their patients without their knowledge or consent. For decades Lacks’ family struggled to make sense of her legacy and to reconcile the immense benefits derived from her cells with the lack of recognition and compensation afforded to them; while researchers and pharmaceutical companies profited handsomely from the knowledge accrued from HeLa cells, Lacks’ descendants lived in poverty, lacking access to health care and education.
Journalist Rebecca Skloot’s 2010 book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks brought the story to a broader audience, shedding light on the woman behind the cells and tracing the scientific uses to which they were put. In 2013 Skloot informed Lacks’ family that researchers had published the DNA sequence of the genome of a strain of HeLa cells. Family members initially objected to the publication of this information; eventually they made a deal with the National Institutes of Health that would secure them more control over access to the data as well as recognition of the source of the information. In 2021 Lacks’ estate filed suit against Thermo Fisher Scientific, a biotech company that had profited greatly from the use of HeLa cells. They reached an undisclosed settlement in 2023.
Numerous efforts have been made to honor Lacks’ legacy and acknowledge her contributions to science. In 2017, in collaboration with the Lacks family, Skloot and Johns Hopkins University announced the establishment of the Henrietta Lacks Foundation, dedicated to promoting education, research, and advocacy in health equity and medical ethics. The foundation also seeks to ensure that Lacks’ descendants benefit from the scientific advancements made possible by her cells. In 2020 Lacks was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame.