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Henrietta Lacks
Henrietta Lacks was born to Johnny and Eliza Lacks Pleasant in Roanoke, VA -
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The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
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Henriette's Mother died
When Henrietta's mother died, she went to live with her grandfather Tommy Lacks in Clover, VA -
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Henrietta has 5 children
Day and Henrietta had five children together: Lawrence (b. 1935), Elsie (1939–1955), David "Sonny" Jr. (b. 1947), Deborah (1949–2009), and Joseph (b. 1950, later changed name to Zakariyya Bari Abdul Rahman). Joseph Lacks -
Henrietta marries Day
Henrietta marries her cousin Day Lacks when she was 20 and he was 25. -
Henrietta moves to Baltimore
Henrietta with two children on each side, joins Day in Baltimore, MD -
Diagnosis
On January 29, 1951, Henrietta went to Johns Hopkins Hospital because she felt a knot inside her. It all started when she asked her cousins to feel her belly, asking if they felt the lump that she did. Her cousins assumed correctly that she was pregnant. After giving birth she went back to the hospital and was diagnosed with cervical cancer -
HeLa cells are discovered
When she went for treatment two samples of Henrietta's cervix were removed— a healthy part and a cancerous part— without her permission.[10] The cells from her cervix were given to Dr. George Otto Gey. These cells would eventually become the HeLa immortal cell line, a commonly used cell line in biomedical research.[1] -
HeLa Cells are immortal
The cells from Henrietta's tumor were given to researcher George Gey, who "discovered that [Henrietta's] cells did something they'd never seen before: They could be kept alive and grow."[13] Before Henrietta, cells cultured from other patients would only survive for a few days. Scientists spent more time trying to keep the cells alive than performing actual research on the cells. Some cells in Lacks's tissue sample behaved differently than others. George Gey was able to isolate one specific cell -
Henrietta Dies
In significant pain and without improvement, Lacks returned to Hopkins on August 8th for a treatment session but asked to be admitted. She remained at the hospital until her death.[1] Though she received treatment and blood transfusions, she died of uremic poisoning on October 4, 1951, at 12:30 A.M. at the age of thirty-one.[11] A subsequent partial autopsy showed that the cancer had metastasized throughout her body.[1] -
Cure for Polio
By 1954, the HeLa strain of cells was being used by Jonas Salk to develop a vaccine for polio.[1][11] To test Salk's new vaccine, the cells were quickly put into mass production in the first-ever cell production factory
