Henrietta Lacks In the autumn of 1951, within the austere confines of a hospital ward in Baltimore, a woman was lying on an operating table when unbeknown to her a small segment of her body was about to alter the trajectory of medical history. Her name was Henrietta Lacks. She was 31 years old, a Black tobacco farmer from southern Virginia, the mother of five children, and—though she didn’t know it yet—the unwitting donor of the most important cells in modern science. The doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital, one of the few institutions at the time that treated Black patients, had diagnosed her with an aggressive case of cervical cancer. Tumors had spread rapidly, and despite radiation treatments, the prognosis was grim. But to the scientists working behind the scenes, there was something extraordinary about Henrietta’s cells. Unlike any others they had ever seen, they refused to die. In that era, growing human cells outside the body was an almost impossible task. Cells would wither, divide a few times, then stop. Researchers had been struggling with this limitation for years. Grab a copy of this book now!
