Historical Injustices

HeLa Cells

  • Henrietta Lacks was diagnosed with cervical cancer and died on October 4, 1951, at the age of 31. Before her passing, a sample of her cancer cells retrieved during a biopsy were sent to Dr. George Gey's nearby tissue lab. Unlike all of the other tissue samples Dr. Gey received, Henrietta's cancer cells doubled every 20-24 hours making it the first “immortal human cell line”. The cells became known as HeLa cells (, pg 89)
  • Gey wanted samples from as many organs in her body as possible, to see if they’d grow like HeLa. But to get those samples after her death, someone would have to ask Henrietta’s husband for permission. Though no law or code of ethics required doctors to ask permission before taking tissue from a living patient, the law made it clear that performing an autopsy or removing tissue from dead without permission was illegal. Henrietta’s husband, Day, says doctors approached him for an autopsy and he said “no”. They later approached him for an autopsy saying that they would “run tests that might help his children someday”. Day agreed and signed the permission form. The test results were never delivered to Henrietta’a family. (, pg 90)
  • This immortal cell line has contributed to many medical breakthroughs, from research on the effects of zero gravity in outer space and the development of polio and COVID-19 vaccines, to the study of leukemia, the AIDS virus and cancer worldwide1. Despite it’s wide use and success, Henrietta’s family never got a dime nor the promised test results. “If our mother cells done so much for medicine, how come her family can’t afford to see no doctors?” - Deborah Lacks
  • To support individuals and families — particularly within minority communities — who were involved in historic research cases without their knowledge, consent, or benefit, you can donate to

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Tuskegee Experiements

  • These experiments started in the 1930’s, when US Public Health Service (USPHS) researchers at the Tuskegee Institute decided to study how syphilis killed, from infection to death. Researchers recruited hundreds of African-American men with syphilis, then watched them die slow, painful, and preventable deaths, even after they realized penicillin could cure them. The research subjects didn’t ask questions; they were poor and uneducated, and the researchers offered incentives: free physical exams, hot meals, and rides into town on clinic days, plus fifty-dollar burial stipends for their families when the men died (, pg 50).
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Cancer Alley

  • “Cancer Alley” is a 130-mile stretch along the Mississippi River where more than 200 industrial plants- primarily fossil fuel and petrochemical operations like plastic plants and chemical plants- line the river2.
  • Science has been using large quantities of single-use plastics, particularly in biological or medical research, since the 1960’s3.
  • Toxic air pollution from the industries are resulting in higher than average cancer rates in this area, among other ailments, in the neighboring communities4.
  • Although there are other diseases people can get from long-term toxic exposure, cancer is the best publicly available data in Louisiana. “This research gap has direct consequences for residents of industrialized neighborhoods because state regulators have cited a lack of evidence for adverse health outcomes when making industrial permitting decisions.”5
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3https://pvcmed.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/When-Plastics-Revolutionized-Healthcare-Medical-Devices-in-a-Historical-Perspective.pdf
4https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/06/29/us-ends-critical-investigation-louisianas-cancer-alley
5https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac4360