Henrietta Lacks was born Loretta Pleasant on August 1, 1920, and lived until October 4, 1951.
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Henrietta Lacks was an African-American woman whose cancer cells are the source of the HeLa cell line, the first immortalized human cell line, and one of the most important cell lines in medical research.
An immortalized cell line reproduces indefinitely under specific conditions, and the HeLa cell line continues to be a source of invaluable medical data to the present day.

Lacks was the unwitting source of these cells from a tumor biopsied during treatment for cervical cancer at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1951.
These cells were then cultured by George Otto Gey, who created the cell line known as HeLa, which is still used for medical research.
As was then the practice, no consent was required to culture the cells obtained from Lacks’s treatment.
Neither she nor her family were compensated for the extraction or use of the HeLa cells.
Even though some information about the origins of HeLa’s immortalized cell lines was known to researchers after 1970, the Lacks family was not made aware of the line’s existence until 1975.
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With knowledge of the cell line’s genetic provenance becoming public, its use for medical research and for commercial purposes continues to raise concerns about privacy and patients’ rights.
Who was the black woman whose cells never died?
The family of a black woman whose cervical cells were harvested in 1951 without her knowledge and replicated infinitely ever since have reached a settlement with a biotech company. Henrietta Lacks‘ cells enabled huge advances in medical science, and the cell line is still being used in research institutes worldwide
Who was the black woman whose DNA was stolen?
The family of a black woman whose cervical cells were harvested in 1951 without her knowledge and replicated infinitely ever since have reached a settlement with a biotech company. Henrietta Lacks‘ cells enabled huge advances in medical science, and the cell line is still being used in research institutes worldwide.
Who was the black woman with miracle blood?
Henrietta Lacks was an African American woman whose cancer cells were taken in 1951 without her or her family’s permission and used to generate the HeLa cell line – the world’s first immortalized human cell … line.


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