Henrietta Lacks

Henrietta Lacks was a young mother of five in Baltimore, Maryland, when she sought treatment for cervical cancer at Johns Hopkins Hospital, one of the few hospitals in the region that treated Black patients at the time.

During a biopsy in 1951, a sample of her tumour cells was taken and cultured without her knowledge or consent, a common practice at the time. Researchers discovered that, unlike any human cells previously studied, hers survived and multiplied indefinitely outside the body, becoming the first immortal human cell line, later named HeLa.

Lacks died of cancer just months later at age 31, but her cells were mass-produced and distributed to laboratories around the world, underpinning the development of the polio vaccine, cancer research, in vitro fertilisation, gene mapping, and countless other medical breakthroughs. Her family remained unaware of HeLa's existence for over twenty years, and the ethical questions raised by her case — around consent, privacy, and profit from a Black woman's cells without compensation to her family — continue to shape medical ethics and research policy today.