Messner 1
Annie Messner
Lisa Holland
HLT 450
September 28, 2015
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
“The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” starts off by introducing an African American
woman who was given the code name “HeLa” in science. The cells of Henrietta Lacks were
used to make the world’s first immortal human cells cut from her cervix without her knowledge
after she died from cervical cancer. Henrietta went to Johns Hopkins Hospital for what she
complained to be a knot in her cervix. When they went in to take a look at her cervix they found
a mass, which later was diagnosed as cancer. George Gey who was apart of Hopkins was in
charge of tissue culture research and had been trying for decades to grow cells outside the
body, but until this point he was unsuccessful. Gey, TeLinde, and Jones who were all doctors at
Johns Hopkins Hospital, began taking samples from any women they could who had cervical
cancer: Henrietta was one of those samples. Without consent or knowledge, they took cells
from Henrietta’s cervix during surgery and took them straight to Gey’s laboratory where they
grew the first human cells. This began one of sciences biggest medical break throughs, all
thanks to Henrietta’s cells without her or her family knowing for years to come.
Henrietta’s cells benefited science as well as the doctors who took the cells from her
cervix. Her cells would go on to help make drugs and vaccines for herpes, leukemia, influenza,
hemophilia, as well as Parkinson’s disease. They also helped make advances for the poliovirus,
chemotherapy, cloning, gene mapping, and in vitro fertilization as well as much more. Once they
