HeLa Cells: Taken Without Consent or Compensation Another investigation of medical procedures performed on a young black woman in the 1950s revealed more unethical actions doctors carried out without the patient’s permission. Henrietta Lacks, an African American woman and mother of five, fell terminally ill when she developed cervical cancer in 1951. During her stay in the colored ward at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, a sample was taken from Lacks’ tumor and another from the healthy part of her cervix without her knowledge or consent. It was then that her doctors discovered that Lacks’ cells could reproduce indefinitely. These cells, which became known as HeLa cells, have helped researchers make numerous advancements in many fields, including the development of treatments and vaccines for diseases such as Parkinson’s disease, AIDS, influenza, cancers, polio and COVID-19. According to UN News, Lacks’ cells have been used in more than 75,000 studies. The profits made from those cells are incalculable. The Lacks family remained unaware that their beloved mother’s cells were being used around the world until nearly two decades later. In 1970, the Lacks children allowed doctors to draw blood under the impression they were being genetically tested for the same disease that killed their mother in 1951, but this was not the case. Samples were once again taken from the Lackses for further medical research without disclosing its purpose to the patients. Henrietta’s children were left feeling exploited and violated. As her HeLa cells lived on indefinitely, the memory of
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Mississippi has practiced forced sterilization of black women for decades.
“ We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population.” Margaret Sanger, 1939 (Planned Parenthood Founder)
Planned Parenthood’s founder Margaret Sanger promoted eugenics. Henrietta Lacks began to fade for many. For those blacks who knew or learned about her story, however, this event caused or increased their mistrust of the medical establishment for decades.
Reproductive Rights, Eugenics, Sterilization and Birth Control In addition to countless experiments on African Americans, black women have consistently been stripped of their reproductive rights. This abuse dated as far back as the 19th century when James Marion Sims, who is referred to as “the father of modern gynecology,” practiced many of his experimental surgeries on
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enslaved black women without anesthetics. Black women are also the most targeted race for forced sterilization in the 20th century. For many women, the invention of birth control was a liberating way to establish control of their lives and bodies, but for many African American women, it became yet another form of exploitation. Civil rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer spoke out in 1964 about her experience with forced sterilization. Hamer was only 44 years old when she was involuntarily sterilized by a white doctor in 1961 after seeking medical care to have a noncancerous uterine tumor removed.
The African Heritage Magazine
| Winter 2022
