The official acknowledgement of the benefit and lasting impact Henrietta Lacks has had on scientific discovery is long, long overdue.
As a budding scientist, I myself worked with HeLa cells and never once knew about where they came from. I knew not one thing about the life of the woman who gave herself to eternity without ever consenting in the first place. It wasn't until I read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks did I know about her. Even more, I never knew of the impact it all had on her surviving family.
"We are happy, we are very happy, that from this point on, publications involving the HeLa genome will recognize Henrietta Lacks," granddaughter Jeri Lacks-Whye said, on a conference call arranged by the NIH to make the announcement. "For more than 60 years our family has been pulled into science without our consent … We are happy to be part of that conversation now, and we see this as an important step."
"We should all count Henrietta Lacks and her family among the greatest philanthropists of our time, when you consider how they have contributed to the advancement of science and human health," said the NIH director, Francis S Collins, on Wednesday.
"This was an historic and really exciting and emotional day for everyone involved, this kind of moment is what [the Lacks family has] been hoping for," Skloot told the Guardian. "It's the third generation. One of the things they've said many times is, 'Our grandmother didn't get to have a voice in this. Our parents didn't get to have a voice either. We want that to stop with us."
If you have never read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, you should.
Rebecca Skloot revivifies Henrietta, studying her not only as the originator of her cell line but as a woman embedded in history. Her absorbing book is not just about medicine and science but about colour, race, class, superstition and enlightenment, about the painful, transfixing romance of being American.