Immortal Henrietta Lacks

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Henrietta Lacks (August 1, 1920 – October 4, 1951) was an African–American woman who was the unwitting donor of cells from her cancerous tumor, which were cultured by George Otto Gey to create an immortal cell line for medical research. This is now known as the HeLa cell line.


According to wikipedia, on February 1, 1951, just days after a march for a cure for polio in New York City, (according to Michael Rogers of the Detroit Free Press, Rolling Stone and Rebecca Skloot), Lacks visited Johns Hopkins because of a painful "knot" in her cervix and a bloody vaginal discharge.


That day, she was diagnosed with cervical cancer, and the appearance of the tumor was unlike anything that had ever been seen by the examining gynecologist Dr. Howard Jones who, with his wife Georgeanna, would go on to found the Jones Institute for Reproductive Medicine at Norfolk, Virginia's Eastern Virginia Medical School.