Henrietta Lacks

She was born Loretta Pleasant. Her family never worked out how it became Henrietta. Her mother died in 1924 having a tenth child, and her father parcelled the children out among relatives in Clover, Virginia. She went to her grandfather Tommy Lacks, in a log cabin that had been the slave quarters on a plantation her white great-grandfather owned. She worked tobacco from childhood and left school in the sixth grade. She shared a room with her first cousin David, called Day. Their first child came when she was 14. They married in 1941 and moved to Turner Station outside Baltimore for the Sparrows Point steel. In January 1951, months after her fifth child was born, she went to Johns Hopkins with what she called a knot in her womb.

The knot was cervical cancer. Hopkins was one of only a few hospitals that treated poor Black patients. During her treatment a surgeon cut two samples from her cervix without asking. Consent as we understand it was neither required nor sought — the taking was legal and routine. In George Gey's laboratory they would not stop dividing. HeLa was the first immortal human cell line. It went into Jonas Salk's polio vaccine trials, into orbit, into work behind several Nobel Prizes and more than 100,000 papers. Companies sold it. Her family found out in the 1970s and received nothing.

What came after is harder to file under the custom of the time. In the early 1970s HeLa was contaminating cell cultures worldwide, and researchers wanted Lacks blood to tell the lines apart. They asked for it without clearly explaining why. Family members said afterwards that they had understood they were being tested for the cancer that killed her. They learned the cells existed in 1975, in passing, at a dinner party. Michael Rogers took the story to a national readership in Rolling Stone in March 1976, under the wrong name. Her medical records were published in the 1980s without the family's consent, and the HeLa genome went online in 2013 the same way. Deborah, a toddler when her mother died, spent decades trying to find out what had been done, and died in 2009.

Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks appeared in 2010 and made the name unavoidable. That year a Morehouse physician gave a headstone to a grave unmarked since 1951. In August 2013 the National Institutes of Health reached an agreement with the family: two of them sit on the six-member group that decides who may use the HeLa genome data. It governs access, not money — the family gets none of the proceeds. The World Health Organization gave its Director-General Award to her son Lawrence in October 2021. Thermo Fisher settled with the family on July 31, 2023, on undisclosed terms. Novartis followed in February 2026. In Roanoke her statue stands where Robert E. Lee's used to.

Henrietta Lacks's life against the full span of the corpus.

• The HeLa cell line discovery
  The first immortal human cell line, grown from tissue taken without her knowledge 1951
• The polio vaccine field testing discovery
  HeLa was mass-produced in the first cell factory built for the purpose, to test Jonas Salk's vaccine 1954
• The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks other
  Rebecca Skloot's book, which put the family's account on the public record 2010
• The Henrietta Lacks Foundation other
  Started by Skloot with her first royalty cheque, for the descendants 2010
• The NIH HeLa Genome Data Access agreement other
  Two family seats on the six-member working group that reviews requests for the data. No money attached 2013
• Lacks estate settlement with Thermo Fisher Scientific other
  Filed October 2021, settled July 31, 2023, on undisclosed terms 2023

• August 1, 1920 aged 0 Born Loretta Pleasant in Roanoke, Virginia The family has never established how the name became Henrietta. Some sources give the date as August 2.
• 1924 aged ~4 Her mother dies delivering a tenth child and the children are split up Her father moved them to Clover, Virginia. She went to her grandfather Tommy Lacks, in a log cabin that had been the slave quarters of a plantation her white great-grandfather owned.
• April 10, 1941 aged 20 Marries her first cousin David Lacks in Halifax County, Virginia They already had two children. Later that year a cousin talked them into leaving the tobacco farm for Turner Station near Baltimore, so Day could work the steel at Sparrows Point.
• January 29, 1951 aged 30 Goes to Johns Hopkins with what she called a knot in her womb Howard Jones found a malignant mass on her cervix. The tumour was recorded as an epidermoid carcinoma — physicians found in 1970 that it was an adenocarcinoma.
• 1951 aged ~31 Two samples are cut from her cervix during radium treatment, without her knowledge They went to George Gey's laboratory. Permission was neither required nor customarily asked for at the time.
• October 4, 1951 aged 31 Dies at Johns Hopkins at 31 A partial autopsy found the cancer throughout her body. She was buried in an unmarked grave at Lackstown, in Clover.
• 1954 aged ~34 HeLa goes into the testing of Jonas Salk's polio vaccine The cells were produced in bulk in the first factory ever built to grow human cells.
• 1975 aged ~55 The family learns the cells exist, in passing, at a dinner party Researchers had been telephoning for blood since the early 1970s, when HeLa was found to be contaminating other cell lines. Family members said afterwards they had understood they were being tested for cancer.
• August 2013 aged 93 The NIH gives the family a say over who may use the HeLa genome data Two of the six seats on the working group that reviews applications, and acknowledgement in papers. No share of any proceeds.

• Jonas Salk 1914–1995
  Medical researcher who developed the first safe and effective polio vaccine. tested his vaccine on her cells
• James Watson 1928–2025
  Co-discoverer of the DNA double helix structure, earning a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. a field built partly on her cells
• Sally Hemings 1773–1835
  Enslaved woman at Monticello who bore children by Thomas Jefferson and negotiated their freedom in France. a life recovered from other people's records
• Dred Scott 1800–1858
  Enslaved man whose lawsuit produced the Supreme Court ruling that Black Americans could not be citizens. the courts and the Black body