| Existing comment:
Just months before Henrietta Lacks died of cervical cancer in 1951, doctors harvested cells from her tumor without her consent. They found that Lacks’s cells were unique: cultured in the lab, they reproduced indefinitely—a first. Her cells revolutionized the development and testing of drugs and treatments, while earning pharmaceutical companies millions in profits. Yet the story behind HeLa cells, as they are known, is part of the long, tragic history of medicine’s exploitation of Black patients. Even as they continue to be used by researchers today, HeLa cells raise questions about patients’ rights, medical ethics, and systemic racism in the face of a perceived common good. |