Henrietta Lacks Monument Zine By Aleyah Daader

Front cover

Henrietta Lacks

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Her Backstory.

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Born in Roanoke, Virginia, on August 1st of 1920, Loretta Pleasant was one of ten African-American children. She changed her name to Henrietta Lacks later in her life. After her mother died when Lacks was four years old, her father, being unable to take care of ten children on his own, moved them to Clover, Virginia where he split his children up among their relatives. Lacks was sent to live with her maternal grandfather, Thomas Lacks, in a two-story log cabin that used to be a slave quarters on a plantation owned by her white great-grandfather and great-uncle. Growing up there, she shared a room with her first cousin, David Lacks, who was nine years old at the time. David Lacks later became her husband. While Henrietta’s story is not well known - you may never have heard of her - she is more significant than you know.

The rest of her early life was quite sad, as well. Lacks grew up going to a designated black school until the sixth grade when she had to drop out in order to help support her family. She had been already working with her family as a tobacco farmer until then. At 14 years old, she gave birth to her first child, Lawrence Lacks. And in 1939 another child, Elsie lacks, who had epilepsy and cerebral palsy. Her family called her “different” and “deaf and dumb”. Little did the family know, this wouldn’t be the last of illnesses in the family.

Despite having his children before, she married David lacks on April 10th, 1941, in Halifax County, before they later moved to Turner Station in Baltimore County, which at the time was one of the biggest and oldest African-American communities. Lacks and her husband gave birth to three more children while living there. But shortly after giving birth to her fifth, at the John Hopkins Hospital, she was diagnosed with cervical cancer in 1951. This happened around the same time as her daughter, Elsie, was sent to the “Hospital for the Negro Insane” where she died at the age of 15 after possibly having pneumoencephalography procedure. This procedure would drill a hole into the patient’s head in order to drain fluid from the brain and then inject oxygen or helium in order to view the patient’s brain more easily in X-rays.

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It turns out that both Henrietta Lacks, and her daughter Elsie were subject to trials and procedures lead by doctors, without their consent. When Lacks was diagnosed with cervical cancer, she was treated at the same hospital she gave birth to her last child in, which was one of the only hospitals where they lived that treated black people. During her years of treatment, a healthy sample and a cancerous sample of tissue were taken from Lacks’s cervix without her knowing or giving consent. A physician and cancer researcher at John Hopkins, George Otto Gey, studied these cells, and he found find that the cancerous sample was a very special set of cells – the first immortalized human cell line, which became one of the most important in medical research history. An immortalized human cell line, unlike other cell lines, reproduces indefinitely under specific conditions. Later called the HeLa cell line, Henrietta’s cell line continues to be an indispensable piece of medical research used up until today.

Henrietta Lacks died at 31 years old, on October 4th, 1951. She went into the hospital for a routine treatment session, but had severe abdominal pain and after months of being in the hospital she passed – the cancer had spread badly across her whole body. During the autopsy that proved this, Gey, who had been studying her cells, took more tissue samples from her body, without consent prior to her death, or any consent or knowledge of her family. Her family only found out later when they were asked to give blood samples and they started raising questions.

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The HeLa Cell Line

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Gey made the HeLa cell line available to other medical researchers who made important medical breakthroughs, such as the polio vaccine in 1954. The HeLa cell line has since become the most commonly used immortal cell line in the world. It has been used in research involving numerous diseases and conditions, including various cancers, HIV, Ebola, Tuberculosis, salmonella, blood disorders, etc. HeLa cells have even been used in research in outer space. Henrietta Lacks has saved countless lives throughout the last century through the medical breakthroughs that were achieved using her cells. Today, a single vial of HeLa cells costs from $400 to thousands of dollars. Pharmaceutical companies have undoubtedly profited greatly, but Henrietta Lacks’ family hasn’t earned even a penny, and for the greater part of the last century, they weren’t even aware of what was going on.

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The Monument.

While there is a memorial for Henrietta in Maryland, and a university in Bristol, England installed a statue of her, I feel strongly that a monument to honor the life and contributions to medical research of Henrietta Lacks is needed and would be appropriate in Virginia, since she was born and grew up here for the greater part of her childhood. Having her statue at George Mason University would be an excellent way to acknowledge her life and her significant contribution to the lives of all Americans, and to the world! I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that HeLa cells were even used to develop some of the medications fighting Covid and/or the vaccines. George Mason has a sizable black community, in addition to students from all over the world. Since our student body is so diverse, erecting a statue to Henrietta would be a positive step toward more racial and ethnic harmony at our campus. It would teach students about another African-American life of great value.

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The Location.

As the designer, I would place her full body statue near one of the buildings utilized by the College of Health and Human Services (CHHS), such as Peterson Hall. Through a quick perusal of the website for CHHS, I learned that one of the priority issues of the college is the elimination of health disparities among ethnic and racial communities in the USA. What better way to draw attention to this issue than a statue of a black woman who was, like many black men and women during her time, denied the right to consent to the use of her body (and her daughter’s body) for medical research? As well, I believe that many students would find the story of the HeLA immortal cell line fascinating; I would include a marker near the statue to provide the story.

By Aleyah Daader