The Way of All Flesh

In 1951, a woman died in Baltimore, America. She was called Henrietta Lacks. These are cells from her body. They were taken from her just before she died. They have been growing and multiplying ever since.

There are now billions of these cells in laboratories around the world. If massed together, they would weigh 400 times her original weight. These cells have transformed modern medicine, but they also became caught up in the politics of our age. They shape the policies of countries and of presidents. They even became involved in the cold war because scientists were convinced that in her cells lay the secret to how to conquer death.

"It was not like an ordinary cancer. This was different, this didn’t look like cancer. It was purple and it bled very easily on touching. I’ve never seen anything that looked like it and I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything that looked like it since, so it was a very special different kind of, well, it turned out to be a tumor." –Dr. Howard Jones, Gynecologist.

Henrietta Lacks and Her Immortal Cells

In 1951, doctors took a tissue sample from a poor, dying black woman that was given to researchers without her knowledge or permission. The HeLa cells, named for the patient’s first and last name, acted differently than other cells in the lab — they were hardier, and replicated at an amazing rate. They also didn’t die.

Cultivation of HeLa launched a revolution in biomedical research and a multibillion-dollar industry. The cells were sold all over the world, and led to important advances to fight humankind’s deadliest diseases, including polio, HIV, and cancer.

No one, aside from the patient’s doctors and lead researchers knew the origins of the HeLa cells — not her name, or anything else about her life. Two decades passed before this mystery woman was revealed. And more years still, before her family had answers to their burning questions.

Today, we examine the woman behind the notorious and immortal HeLa cells: Henrietta Lacks.