Who was Henrietta Lacks

Not long before her death, Henrietta Lacks danced. As the film rolled, her long thin face teased the camera, flashing a seductive grin as she moved, her eyes locked on the lens. She tilted her head back and raised her hands, waving them softly in the air before letting them fall to smooth her curlers. Then the film went blank.

Henrietta danced in Turners Station, a small, segregated Baltimore community where she moved in 1943. She had come by train from a plantation town in Virginia, leaving her kin behind, most still picking tobacco long after freedom from slavery. As she sped toward Baltimore, at the age of 23, her husband, David Lacks, waited in their new brick house with a stove that burned gas instead of wood. Henrietta knew she was heading into a more modern world. What she didn't know was that less than a decade later, after giving birth to her fifth child, her womb would give rise to a new age in medicine.
More on Henrietta Lacks.

Immortality of Hela cells

HeLa cells are termed "immortal" in that they can divide an unlimited number of times in a laboratory cell culture plate as long as fundamental cell survival conditions are met (HeLa cells have an active version of the enzyme telomerase during cell division, which prevents the incremental shortening of telomeres that is implicated in aging and eventual cell death. More on Hela Cells.

Where did the Hela cells come from?

HeLa cells are a human epithelial cervical cancer (cervical cancer), and the first human cells, from which a permanent cell line was established. On 9 February 1951, surgeon Lawrence Wharton Jr. removed the tissue from the patient Henrietta Lacks, a 31-year-old African American woman from Baltimore, in the Women's Clinic of the Johns Hopkins Hospital. The cells were from the carcinoma of the cervix and were expected to be examined for malignancy. The patient died 8 months later from the disease. Read More on Hela Cells.