For years, it was a bit of a mystery as to why Henrietta’s cancer cells replicated so quickly without dying. Lacks’ tissue, the practice of obtaining informed consent from cell or tissue donors was essentially unknown among academic medical centers.”ġ4. Johns Hopkins issued a statement about its use of HeLa Cells nearly sixty years later, stating, 'It’s important to note that at the time the cells were taken from Mrs.

Eventually Henrietta's daughter, Deborah Lacks, faced her fears and grew to become close with Skloot, but passed away shortly before the book was published.ġ3. Members of Henrietta's family originally refused to speak to Rebecca Skloot during the writing of the book. It then resurfaced in 2010 when The New York Times best-selling book by Rebecca Skloot, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (which took ten years to write) was published.ġ2. The case first gained public visibility in 1976 when The Rolling Stone published a detailed account of what happened to her cells and included comments from her husband, and then again when the BBC aired an award-winning documentary on HeLa in 1998. They only found out because researchers were contacting them to find out more about the genetics of the immortal cells that they had been using in research.ġ0. Henrietta left behind a husband and five children when she died, but her family didn’t know the cell cultures existed until the 1970s, more than 20 years after her death. The HeLa line started to be in high demand and began to be mass-produced in a cell production factory in 1954, and then mailed to scientists around the world for countless uses for scientific research.ĩ. These cells can, under sufficient living conditions, reproduce themselves indefinitely.Ĩ. He discovered that her cells, now known as HeLa Cells, could not only be kept alive, but that they would grow indefinitely, meaning that it is was an immortalized cell line. Gey harvested Henrietta’s cells without her knowledge or permission, in hopes of using them for scientific research.ħ. George Otto Gey, a cancer researcher and physician who noticed something unusual: they did not seem to die, unlike other cancer cells.Ħ.

At the time, she was diagnosed with malignant epidermoid carcinoma, but it was later discovered that it was a misdiagnosis: she actually had adenocarcinoma.ĥ. Physician Howard Jones discovered a fast-growing cancerous tumor on her cervix was discovered, and she was diagnosed with terminal cervical cancer.Ĥ. In January 1951 she went to Johns Hopkins Hospital - the only hospital in the area that treated black patients at the time - after experiencing abnormal pain and bleeding in her abdomen.ģ. Henrietta Lacks was born Loretta Pleasant, on Augin Roanoke, Virginia.Ģ. 17 Facts About The Amazing Story Of Henrietta Lacksġ.

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