Henrietta Lacks: The 'immortal' cells that changed the world - BBC REEL

henrietta lacks was a sort of poor black tobacco farmer who grew up in southern virginia and in 1951 she was diagnosed with cervical cancer at that point she had moved up to baltimore and she went to johns hopkins for treatment um because it was the only place anywhere near her that treated black patients so this was the era of segregation and the hospitals had the quote-unquote colored wards which was the only place that black patients or poor patients could be seen and without telling her before treating her tumor her doctor just cut a little piece

and put it in a dish and he sent that down the hall to george guy who is the head of tissue culture research at hopkins and george guy had been trying to grow human cells outside of the body for decades and it had never worked and for reasons that remained a mystery henrietta's cells just never died so they started doubling their numbers every 24 hours they went from like one dish to two to four to eight to 16 and then just sort of pretty quickly took over the lab and george guy started calling his colleagues

and saying i think i have the first immortal human cell line which is what they're called which means they'll just grow and divide forever and in response his colleagues all said great can we have some because there'd been this enormous effort to grow cells outside the body for 100 years um because we just we really didn't know a lot about cells at that point and in response to all his colleagues asking for them george guy sent them to anyone who wanted to use them for research and they spread around the world this way really fast

um and they were one of the most important things that happened to medicine they were used to help create the polio vaccine they went up the first space missions to see what would happen to human cells in zero gravity they were used to create our most important cancer medications like the christine and tamoxifen her cells were the first ever cloned her genes some of the first ever mapped they were used to help develop in vitro fertilization basically almost all of the vaccines we take today can be traced back to research with her cells there isn't

a person out there who hasn't benefited from research on her cells the surprising tenacity of her cancer cells which made them so important to medical research also ultimately took her life henrietta lacks died in october 1951 at the age of 31. as her cells were taken without her knowledge in an era before the concept of informed consent existed henrietta died never knowing how important her cells would be even her family didn't learn of the true extent of her legacy until science writer rebecca skloot began working with henrietta's daughter deborah to uncover the truth almost five

decades later rebecca she worked hand in hand with my mother deborah lacks they went on journeys to clover virginia to talk to family members they did a lot of work together uh they hit the road a lot they put a lot of miles on their cars my mom was uh two years old when henrietta passed away so she never knew her mother as deborah learned about these things she was there are so much there's so much mixed emotion in it because on the one hand look at all this incredible stuff my mother did for science

and for the world that that gave her a level of peace with her mother's death that she had wanted her entire life at the same time there was a lot of anger about the fact that everyone has benefited from these cells except her family this information was out there for so many years and the family was not even aware of of henrietta's [Music] that they had taken cells from henrietta lacks and these cells have been used all over the world by scientists labs researchers and millions millions of dollars have been made and you still have

the family struggling with basic health care you know we got to recognize the past but kind of like move forward and and move in a positive direction to to make sure that this doesn't happen again to our family or anybody else's family and the lacks family is making sure that we continue to move forward to honor and preserve her her legacy and speak about her life so they collaborated with the nih and formed what's known as the gila genome committee where a few members of the lax family and a group of scientists sit on this

committee and anyone who wants to do research with the henrietta's genome um have to put an application that is reviewed by members of the family and the nih um scientists it was just it was unprecedented there's never been a moment like that where research quote-unquote research subjects were a part of the decision-making mechanism of science the family now has a seat at the table so instead of us being the last to know we would be the first to know [Music] the immortal life of and relax is about so many different things it's about science and

communication and how important it is for scientists to be able to communicate with the public it's a story about journalism what happens when people tell your story it's it's very much a story about race and science and race and medicine so much of the history of science and medicine was built on the backs of black people without their knowledge and so it's so important that henrietta's story be told as part of that history and that that's the concept behind black lives matter is saying have this black life mattered and it matters that we talk about

it and it matters that we tell black stories and look at what can happen when we try to kind of squash those stories it has generations of impact this year marks the 100th anniversary of henrietta's birth and her incredible immortal cells continue to be more important than ever with the outbreak of the covid19 pandemic the hela cells were at the forefront of the early research which helped to shape our understanding of the virus within the first kind of few days of when we really realized oh wow this is a pandemic this is terrifying i started

getting texts from members of like today only saying tell me henry has got this like henry hila cells are working on this right you know and i do think that it says a lot about the lacks family that their first response to the pandemic from so many of them was okay how is he dealing with this you know we know she's got this it just makes me proud because she's not only helping a specific group of people but she's helping everybody worldwide she's saving lives she's giving life so i mean yeah with these i say

magical cells when i do speaking engagements um people come up to me and they say um i have children because of your grandmother um that's a heartwarming feeling when you know your grandmother has died but yet she's still providing life so for her to know that she is saving and impacting so many lives uh she would be she would be smiling from ear to ear that beautiful smile that beautiful henry had a smile uh it it it'll light up a room [Music] you