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The Forum: The woman whose cells changed medical history

The Immortal Cells of Henrietta Lacks

12/11/2020 GMT

The woman whose cells changed medical history

BBC World Service - The Forum, The woman whose cells changed medical history

The story of Henrietta Lacks who unwittingly left behind an extraordinary medical legacy

Henrietta Lacks died of cancer in 1951, but the billions of cells created from her unusually virulent tumour helped make possible all sorts of medical breakthroughs.

The story of a young mother who unwittingly left behind a vast medical legacy. Henrietta Lacks died of cancer in Baltimore in 1951 and though she never gave consent to her tissue being used for research, doctors at the time found that her unusually virulent tumour had extraordinary properties. As her cells multiplied in labs around the world, they helped make possible all sorts of medical breakthroughs, from the polio vaccine to cancer drugs and IVF treatment. But it took the Lacks family decades to discover what was going on, and the story raises questions for all of us – about medical ethics, institutional racism, and our right to privacy.

Joining Bridget Kendall to discuss this remarkable story are: Henrietta Lacks' grandson David Lacks Jnr who's on the board of the HeLa Genome Access Working Group; the award-winning science writer, Rebecca Skloot, whose book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks brought the story to the world's attention a decade ago; and Sir John Burn, Professor of Clinical Genetics at Newcastle University.

Produced by Jo Impey for BBC World Service

Image: Henrietta Lacks
Image credit: Lacks Family

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