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Henrietta Lacks

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Submitted By kiajanae
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August 3, 2011
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Loretta Pleasant, also known Henrietta Lacks, Hennie and many other names was born August 1, 1920 in Roanoke, Virginia. Henrietta was a poor African American woman who worked as a tobacco farmer. She lived with her parents and eight older siblings. After her mother Eliza died from giving birth to her tenth child, Hennie along with her brothers and sisters, were distributed amongst the family and Hennie ended up living on hillside with her grandfather, Tommy Lacks in his home-house. It was a four bedroom log cabin with plank floors and gas lanterns. Once Loretta moved in with her grandfather, she met and married her first cousin David Lacks after their two children were born.
Henrietta Lacks and David, also known as Day, had a total of five children; Sonny, Dale, Elsie, Lawrence and Joe. Elsie was their second child. She was born with epilepsy, a disorder of the nervous system. Once diagnosed, Elsie was sent to an institution known as the Hospital for the Negro Insane in Crownsville, Virginia. While she was residing at the institution, scientists were running tests on patients without consent. The scientists would drill a hole into the patients’ brains and drain the fluids to get the images of their brains, which led to major symptoms such as dizziness and vomiting.
On January 29, 1951, Henrietta traveled to John Hopkins Hospital after noticing a lump inside of her cervix and bleeding consistently. John Hopkins was the only hospital that treated poor African American patients who were not able to pay their medical bills. Henrietta’s gynecologist, Howard Jones, took a sample of her cervix and shipped it off to a pathology lab. Results came back revealing she had stage one of cervix cancer. Henrietta signed a document giving permission to the John Hopkins’ staff to operate on her. While she was unconscious, Dr. Lawrence Wharton shaved pieces of Henrietta’s cervix, and kept samples of it in a glass dish without her being aware. The samples of her cervix were given to Dr.George Gey; the best cervical cancer doctor at John Hopkins. Dr. Gey was known for being able to start a cell line with Henrietta’s cells so they could be used for many types of experiments, which he named HeLa. Her cells have helped create medicines to treat various diseases such as herpes, Parkinson’s disease, influenza, and many more. Henrietta’s cells were so high in demand; that they were being shipped to many science labs for research with AIDS, chemotherapy, cloning, etc.
Henrietta’s family had no knowledge of how popular her cells were, nor that they were the beginning of a multi-million dollar industry, until 20 years after her death. The family began to get calls from scientists wanting various types of gene connections to Henrietta. Even though her cells were so popular and high in demand, the family not once received any profits. While her cells were taken without permission, her contribution has saved the lives of many people who may never know that it was a poor African American tobacco farmer who made that contribution.

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