Early life (1920–1940)
Henrietta Lacks, originally born asLoretta Pleasant, on August 18, 1920 in Roanoke, Virginia to Eliza and John Randall Pleasant . Her family is uncertain how her name changed from Loretta to Henrietta; with Hennie as a nickname. Henrietta’s mother died giving birth to her tenth child in 1924.
Sometime after Eliza Pleasant died, John Pleasant took the children back to where their relatives lived, and they were raised by their mother's relatives. Henrietta ended up with her grandfather in Clover, Virginia.John worked as a brakeman on the railroad.
Henrietta Lacks pictured with David Lacks (Date not known)
Later In Life (1941–1950)
Henrietta married her first cousin, David "Day" Lacks in Halifax County, Virginia. David had already been living with Henrietta's grandfather when she moved there at age 4. Their marriage in 1941, after their first two children were born, (the first when Henrietta was just 14) surprised many in the family as they had been raised like brother and sister.
David went north to search for work, Henrietta followed in 1943, bringing their children with her. David found work at the Sparrow's Point shipyards and found a house for them on New Pittsburgh Avenue in Turners Station, now a part of Dundalk, Baltimore County, Maryland
Day and Henrietta had five children together: Lawrence (1935), Elsie (1939), David "Sonny" Jr. (1947), Deborah (1949), and Joseph (b. 1950, later changed name to Zakariyya Bari Abdul Rahman). Joseph Lacks, Henrietta's last child, was born at Johns Hopkins Hospital in November 1950, just four and a half months before Henrietta was diagnosed with cancer. Elsie was described by the family as "different", "deaf and dumb" and eventually died in the Crownsville State Hospital in 1955.
Lawrence Lacks (left), 75, and David "Sonny" Lacks, 62, both of Baltimore, plan to place a headstone on their mother Henrietta's unmarked grave in Clover.
Diagnoses and Death (1951)
On February 1, 1951, Lacks visited Johns Hopkins because of a painful "knot" in her cervix and a bloody vaginal discharge. After a biopsy, she was diagnosed with cervical cancer. The appearance of the tumor was unlike anything that had ever been seen by the examining gynecologist Dr. Howard Jones.
Prior to receiving treatment for the tumor, cells from the carcinoma (malignant tumor) were removed for research purposes without her knowledge or permission, which was standard procedure at that time. During her second visit eight days later, Dr. George Otto Gey obtained another sample of her tumor. These cells would eventually become the HeLaimmortal cell line, a commonly used cell line in biomedical research.[1]
Lacks was treated with radium tube inserts, which were sown in place, a common treatment for these types of cancers in 1951. After several days in place, the tubes were removed and she was released from Johns Hopkins with instructions to return for X-ray treatments as a follow up. Lacks returned for the X-ray treatments. However, her condition worsened and the Hopkins doctors treated her with antibiotics, thinking that her problem might be complicated by an underlying venereal disease (she had neurosyphilis and presented with acute gonorrhea at one point as well).
In significant pain and without improvement, Lacks returned to Hopkins demanding to be admitted on August 8 and remained until her death. Though she received treatment and blood transfusions, she died of uremic poisoning on October 4, 1951 at the age of thirty-one. A subsequent partial autopsy showed that the cancer had metastasized throughout her body.
Henrietta Lacks was buried without a tombstone in a family cemetery in Lackstown, a part of Clover in Halifax County, Virginia. Her exact burial location is not known, although the family believes it is within feet of her mother's gravesite.
Henrietta's husband, David Lacks, was told little following her death on October 4, 1951. For their part, members of the Lacks family were kept in the dark about the existence of the tissue line, and when its existence was revealed in a article by Michael Rogers, family members were confused about how Henrietta's cells could have been taken without consent and how they could still be alive 50 years after her death.