Henrietta Lacks: Immortal life of a Tobacco Farmer

Submitted by Gene Hall

Greater love hath no man than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends…John 15:13 NIV. And that is what Henrietta Lacks did; well, all of us were not exactly her friends, but we continue to benefit from her immortal contributions to life.

A 2017 blog (www.tebu-bio.com) contends that hela cells are immortal, meaning they will divide again and again and again… This performance can be explained by the expression of an overactive telomerase that rebuilds telomeres after each division, preventing cellular aging and cellular senescence and allowing perpetual divisions of the cells. Since I am just the son of a sharecropper who grew up working on other folks’ farms, please don’t expect me to adequately explain all of this medical jargon. Matter of fact, during my first job as a professional educator at Valdosta State University, one of my pupils told me to relax and not try to act as though I could decipher all knowledge. Whew, what a sigh of relief that was.

But where did those immortal hela cells come from? They came from Henrietta Lacks. According to Wikipedia and the Encyclopedia Britannica, she was an African American woman whose cancer cells are the source of the Hela cell line, the very first immortalized human cell line in the world. It is one of the most important cell lines in all of medical research. She was born in 1920 in Roanoke, Va. and died in 1951 in Baltimore, Md.

Why have we not heard more about this female hero? A 2010 CBS documentary by Jim Axelrod attempted to make her story known. He starts by saying “somewhere in the humble family cemetery off a country road in the town of Clover, Va, a woman who died nearly 60 years ago lies in an unmarked grave. It is a shame, because the world should know her name: Henrietta Lacks. She was a poor, African American tobacco farmer, a mother of five children, who died of cervical cancer when she was 31.” I sort of remember Beyoncé in one of her recordings singing ‘say my name say my name’. But, I wonder how many of us can say the name Henrietta Lacks during Breast cancer awareness month?

Dr. Rebecca Skloot, a professor at the University of Memphis has devoted 10 years telling Mrs. Lacks’ story. It culminated in Skloot’s best-selling book ‘The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks’. I am heading to the local book stores to purchase a dozen copies of her text. I urge you to do the same.

How did Mrs. Lacks’ cells become so important? Well, according to multiple sources, in 1950 Henrietta, the great granddaughter of slaves, donated her cells (unwittingly), while being treated for cervical cancer at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md. Without her knowing, and unrelated to her treatment, doctors took some of her cells for research. Hum, next time you go for a doctor’s visit you might want to ask questions and even say a prayer. Cause only the good Lord really knows what those medical doctors/researchers are going to do. I suspect that is why they call it practicing medicine.

After looking well into the matter, I learned that for the first time in history, human cells could be grown and infinitely replicated, outside the body. Although she died in 1951, Henrietta’s cells live on, multiplying by billions, and are the catalyst for many cancer patients’ extended life spans. Still today, this is nothing short of a medical miracle.

Besides Skloot, additional research was done by Dr. Clarence Spigner, who has written a powerful essay on Mrs. Lacks for Blackpast.org entitled ‘Henrietta Lacks and the Debate Over Ethics in Bio-medical Research. His expose’ provides an overview of Mrs. Lacks’ life and the treatment of her cancer. The journalist Skloot’s work tells a riveting story of the collision between race, ethics and medicine, and of her children consumed with questions about the mother some of them never got the chance to know. That resonates with me, since my mother, Ruth Lawrence Hall, passed away from breast cancer one month after I was born…almost 63 years ago. Thanks be to God, I had a really good stepmother, Emma Lou, and my dad Henry to finish raising me.

How have hela cells benefitted society? Among other good things, according to researchers who regularly publish within the Journal of the American Medical Association, they were successfully used to help test the polio vaccine so that it could be approved for use in people. They went up in the first space missions to see what would happen to human cells in zero gravity. Hers were the first cells ever cloned, and even the very first ones to be mapped. Moreover, hela cells were used to create some of our basic cancer drugs, like tomaxiphin. Its incomprehensible to calculate the true value added to society because of Mrs. Lack’s cells.

So, the descendants of Mrs. Henrietta Lacks must really be rich, huh? Not by a long shot. You see, her widower, David Lacks, and their kids were never told about her valuable contributions to science until about 25 years later. Biomedical research experts, pharmaceutical giants and many others have made billions of dollars off this poor black tobacco farmer’s cells. Her descendants continue to eke out a meager living. Matter of fact, it has been reported that some of her family members cannot even afford health insurance. Michael Bloomberg gave almost 2 billion dollars to John Hopkins University. That is the largest gift of any philanthropist to an institution of higher education. All things considered; Mrs. Henrietta Lacks donated even more. She gave cells that keep on giving… in perpetuity. I believe it is high time her descendants be financially compensated as recompence for her immortal contributions to science, and the sustainability of cancer patients around the globe.