The Lacks Family's Unsettling Discovery of Henrietta's Living Cells

Key Insight

In 1973, Bobbette Lacks, Henrietta's daughter-in-law, had a chance encounter that revealed a shocking truth about Henrietta. While at a friend's house, her friend's brother-in-law, a scientist from the National Cancer Institute, mentioned working with cells from a woman named Henrietta Lacks, who had died of cervical cancer at Hopkins in the fifties. Bobbette, stunned, immediately questioned how he knew Henrietta's medical details and why her family was unaware that 'part of her was still alive.' This revelation immediately raised fears, particularly given recent news of the government-halted Tuskegee syphilis study, making her fear that Henrietta's children and grandchildren might be targeted next.

The news plunged the Lacks family into confusion and alarm. Bobbette rushed home to tell Lawrence, Henrietta's son, that 'Part of your mother, it's alive!' Lawrence then contacted his father, Day, who struggled to comprehend how Henrietta could be alive when he had witnessed her funeral in Clover. He wondered if her body had been exhumed or if something had been done to her during the autopsy. Lawrence immediately called the main switchboard at Hopkins, asserting, 'I'm calling about my mother, Henrietta Lacks—you got some of her alive in there,' but operators found no record of Henrietta Lacks as a current patient, leaving the family without answers or direction.

The family's distress was compounded by the complete lack of prior knowledge; no one had ever informed them that Henrietta's cells were being used. The scientist who revealed the information admitted that, like most researchers, he had 'never thought about whether the woman behind HeLa cells had given them voluntarily.' Bobbette repeatedly expressed her disbelief: 'How come nobody told her family part of her was still alive?' This discovery marked the traumatic beginning of the family's engagement with Henrietta's enduring legacy in scientific research, highlighting their profound sense of betrayal and the void of information provided to them.