Before 2010, hardly anyone had heard of Henrietta Lacks’ phenomenal story. This was the year when ‘The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks’ by Rebecca Skloot was released and managed to become an instant New York Times Best Seller.
This biography narrated the story of an African-American woman who was born on a tobacco farm in Virginia in the 1920s. She had revolutionized the medical research industry by saving the lives of millions. This wasn’t even the catch – she had done so without ever knowing that she was responsible for this brilliant outcome.
Little Known Black History Fact: Don Cornelius
At the age of 31, Lacks was in Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins Hospital – which helped Black patients in segregated wards. Here she found that a cancerous tumor was growing in her cervix at a very alarming rate.
At that time, such cancers would prevail over their victims and doctors would mostly just gather research samples – both normal and infected. When Lacks couldn’t take it anymore, she got herself admitted and her doctor extracted 2 dime-sized pieces of tissue from her infected cervix and her healthy organ. These samples were then used to create the first-ever batch of immortal cells.
Lacks died from the cancer but her cells lived on.
Source: Here Are Some Striking Facts about the ‘Mother of Modern Medicine’: Henrietta Lacks
