Henrietta Lacks: The Woman Who Changed Medicine Without Her Consent

March is Women’s History Month, so let’s take a moment to celebrate the badass women who have paved the way in science and medicine. But let’s also acknowledge a hard truth—not all women in this history had a choice. Some, like Henrietta Lacks, had their contributions taken without consent.

If you haven’t read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, consider adding it to your list. Published in 2010, it spent nearly a year and a half on the New York Times bestseller list, won multiple awards, and was adapted into a film in 2017. The book tells the true and deeply important story of Henrietta Lacks, a Black woman in her early 30s who was diagnosed with aggressive cervical cancer in 1951—and whose cells changed the course of modern medicine.

Her cancer cells, now known as HeLa cells, had an extraordinary ability to divide rapidly and essentially never die, thanks to an overactive enzyme called telomerase. Because of this, they became the foundation for groundbreaking research in everything from vaccines and chemotherapy to disease treatments—including HIV and Covid-19. HeLa cells have even been sent into space to study the effects of zero gravity.

But here’s the problem: Henrietta Lacks never gave consent for her cells to be used this way. Her family never gave consent either. Informed consent, as we understand it today, didn’t exist in 1951. Some doctors and researchers loosely followed ethical guidelines, but most did not. At the time, patients—especially Black patients and those from low-income backgrounds—were expected to trust doctors without question. Johns Hopkins Hospital, where Henrietta sought treatment, was one of the few that even accepted Black patients at the time.

For years, her family had no idea that her cells were being used, studied, and profited from by the medical and biotech industries. It wasn’t until 2023 that her descendants finally settled a lawsuit against Thermo Fisher Scientific, a company that continued to profit from HeLa cells without the family’s permission.

If you’re looking for a book that blends science, medicine, history, ethics, and the incredible story of one woman at the center of it all, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a must-read. Her legacy is complex, but one thing is clear—her cells revolutionized medicine. And this Women’s History Month, that’s something worth reflecting on.