Among several of its projects, the Roanoke Hidden Histories initiative will erect a statue of Henrietta Lacks, who was born Loretta Pleasant in Roanoke, Virginia, in 1920. The last name “Lacks” came later from her husband’s last name. It is unclear about the change of the first name.
Henrietta Lacks is honored because of the significance of her life and death. In 1951, Lacks was treated for cervical cancer at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. In a usual procedure during her diagnosis, the surgeon took cancerous cells from her body. Also, as usual, these cells were passed on to the Hospital laboratory. And that is where the story starts.
Henrietta Lacks’ cancer was terminal, and she died eight months after diagnosis, at age 31. However, her cells were special. Other cell samples always died in the lab, but her cells were special. They lived and doubled every 24 hours. This was the beginning of the immortal HeLa cells.
Among the important scientific discoveries of the 20th century was the first immortal human cell line known as “HeLa,” taken from the first two letters of her first name, Henrietta, and her last name, “Lacks.” Work done with HeLa cells underpins much of modern medicine.
HeLa cells were instrumental in developing the polio vaccines in the 1950s and the COVID-19 vaccines in 2020. In between, HeLa cells were important in studying leukemia, the AIDS virus, and cancer worldwide.
Some of the HeLa cells went up in the first space missions to see what would happen to cells in zero gravity. Many scientific landmarks since then have used her cells, including cloning, gene mapping, and in-vitro fertilization.
What was wrong? What was the harm?
Although there was no requirement in 1951 to tell patients or their families their cells were being tested in the laboratory beyond the specific diagnosis, it was unethical, especially after they determined that the cells lived and multiplied.
Then there was the commercial aspect. First, the laboratory director gave the cells away for free. But later, commercial laboratories made substantial profits growing and selling these cells for research. This use of the cells was seriously problematic as these businesses have yet to tell the family or pay them for this commercial venture.
The revelation of the widespread use of these cells came 25 years later, right after the significant revelation of the Tuskegee Syphilis study, where poor Black men were monitored and studied for decades but not treated.
Little of this was shocking to African Americans, as Black history is full of the use of Black bodies for clinical research. The celebrated Dr. James Sims, the 19th-century pioneer in treating women’s medical disorders, practiced on enslaved women—without anesthesia.
Clinical researchers sometimes bought enslaved people for experimentation, and after the end of slavery, medical schools sometimes used stolen Black bodies for experimentation.
Harriet Washington chronicles this maltreatment of Blacks in medical research in her book Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present. In this book, she quotes neurosurgeon Harry Bailey, M.D., in a 1960s speech he delivered at Tulane Medical School, “[It was] cheaper to use Niggers than cats because they were everywhere and cheap experimental animals.”
One way to deal with such treatment is to bring lawsuits. And that is what the Lacks family is doing. They are suing a biotechnology company for profiting by producing and selling Henrietta Lacks’ cells.
In a very significant move, the city of Roanoke will replace the statue of Robert E. Lee with one of Henrietta Lacks and rename Lee Plaza as Henrietta Lacks Plaza. They will replace the memorial to a traitor with one of a person whose life was favorable for the country.