She donated her body to science. But no one ever asked.
Henrietta Lacks was 31 when she was diagnosed with an aggressive uterine cancer. It was 1951, in a segregated hospital for Black patients. Treatment was minimal, rights were nonexistent. She died a few months later. But a part of her lived on.
During an exam, without her consent, doctors took some of her tumor cells. They discovered they could multiply forever. This had never happened before. Thus began the HeLa cell line, the first “immortal” human cells. They would go on to power some of the biggest breakthroughs in medicine: vaccines, AIDS research, cloning, genetics, even space missions.
The medical industry made billions. The Lacks family received nothing. No money. No explanation. It was only many years later that they learned their mother’s DNA was being used in labs across the world. And that’s when the questions started. Who owns the body once it’s been “sampled”? Can your biology be used without permission? Where does science end, and ownership begin?
It took decades for the family to be recognized, and only in 2023, after a legal battle, did some descendants receive a symbolic settlement from a company that had profited off those cells.
Today, our bodies are already data: facial recognition, fingerprints, iris scans, DNA from ancestry tests, smartwatches tracking heart rate, blood pressure, sleep. Do we know where that data goes, who uses it, for how long?
Henrietta is not a story from the past. She is our present. The only difference is that today we sign the consent forms without reading, without understanding. And when we realize we’ve become “immortal” in some database, it will be too late to say no.
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Marco Camisani Calzolari
marcocamisanicalzolari.com/biography