Henrietta Lacks and the HeLa Cell
Storyboard Text
- Henrietta's Death
- The Family
- The HeLa Cell Legacy
- Henrietta died to her cancer a few months after getting her diagnosis. She didn't know of her contribution to science and she got no credit or recognition at all. She was just another cancer patient that died. This raised a lot of racial, socioeconomic, and ethical issues as many doctors wouldn't have treated her due to her being poor and African American.
- The Fight for Henrietta
- After Henrietta's death, her family still lived in poverty. Her descendants of 3 generations remained in poverty and struggled to access things as basic as heath insurance even though Henrietta made the biggest change to the medical field arguably ever. Her youngest children as well as grandchildren never got to know her and she didn't get any acknowledgement for her cells.
- The End
- 60 years after her death, 50 million metric tons of Henrietta's cells had grown and they continue to grow in laboratories today. They helped create the COVID-19 vaccine, develop leukemia studies, the AIDS virus and much more. The cells became the first human biological material to be bought and sold and it became a multi billion dollar business. Henrietta's family got none of the money.
- :3
- Henrietta's daughter, Deborah fought for her family to have at least some of the money made from the multi billion dollar business her mothers cells created. They received nothing for her contribution, not even compensation for Henrietta just dying in the hospital months after her cells were discovered. They court claimed that when the cells leave the body, there is no ownership to be claimed.
- Henrietta's family felt owed for her contribution yet still received nothing. Nobody knew what a young poor black woman had done nor all the people her cells helped save. That is until author Rebecca Skloot took on the task of writing about Henrietta's story more from the perspective of her daughter Deborah. In The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca shares her story and she gets recognition for what she did and continues to do through her cells living on.
- :)
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