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BLACK HISTORY STORY....HENRIETTA LACKS' 'IMMORTAL CELLS' SPARK MEDICAL BREAKTHROUGH.... Only science fiction stories once told of a future where animals, even humans could live forever and in 1951, such stories were becoming reality as the United States suffered from segregation and the rise of the civil rights movement. In that year, a scientist at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, created the first immortal human cell line with a tissue sample taken from a young Black woman with cervical cancer. Medical researchers learned to use Henrietta Lacks cells to grow human cells to learn the intricacies of how cells function and test theories about the causes and treatment of diseases. The cell lines these researchers required were literally “immortal” cells that can grow indefinitely, be frozen for decades, divided into different batches and shared among scientists. These cells, called HeLa cells, quickly became invaluable to medical research and the donor was a mystery for decades. In her new book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, journalist Rebecca Skloot tracked down the story of Lacks and discovered the amazing story of how the daughter of a poor Black farmer made her unknowing impact on modern medicine as well as the Lacks family. |
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