The HeLa cell line was the first immortal human cell line ever established. These cells, a highly aggressive form of cervical cancer, were isolated in 1951 at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, from Henrietta Lacks, a 31-year-old African American woman from Clover, Virginia. Unfortunately, Henrietta died of cervical cancer not long after HeLa cells were isolated. The HeLa cell line has been used in an extraordinary amount of medical research since then, from developing vaccines for polio and Ebola to helping scientists and physicians better understand diseases like HIV-AIDS, cervical cancer, and tuberculosis. Henrietta’s cells have been sent to space and used to understand the effects of X-rays on human tissues, how Salmonella causes infection, and how cells can prevent premature aging by protecting against telomere degradation. The scientific advancements made due to Henrietta’s cells are innumerable and continue to grow today. Many discoveries that have contributed to modern medicine have HeLa cells to thank. However, it is also important to note the unethical circumstances in which Henrietta’s cells were isolated and used. Physicians and researchers at Johns Hopkins biopsied, grew, sold, and performed research on Henrietta’s cells without informing or obtaining consent from her while she was still alive or from her family after her death. Researchers did not give Henrietta or her family credit for HeLa cells, and her family didn’t even know her cells were being used for research until 1973, over 20 years after Henrietta’s death. Henrietta’s name and genome sequence were eventually publicized without consent from her family. Researchers also took blood samples from the Lacks family to assist in sequencing the genome of HeLa cells under the false guise that the blood samples would be used to test Henrietta’s children for the same cancer that resulted in her untimely death. After a long fight for answers and justice, in 2023, over 70 years after the death of Henrietta Lacks, the Lacks family reached a settlement with and received compensation from Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., the company that primarily benefited from the sales of HeLa cells. 

 

Many also know the story behind HeLa cells thanks to the book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, which was also made into a movie by HBO in 2017. In starting this painting, I drew most of my inspiration from Skloot’s book and the movie adaptation. In the book’s prologue, Skloot speculates:

 

“I’ve tried to imagine how she’d feel knowing that her cells went up in the first space missions to see what would happen to human cells in zero gravity, or that they helped with some of the most important advances in medicine: the polio vaccine, chemotherapy, cloning, gene mapping, in vitro fertilization. I’m pretty sure that she—like most of us—would be shocked to hear that there are trillions more of her cells growing in laboratories now than there ever were in her body.”

 

In this painting, I tried to convey the mixed emotions I imagine Henrietta would feel.