Posted on 10/15/2021 6:36:03 PM PDT by nickcarraway
The chief of the World Health Organization has honored the late Henrietta Lacks, an American woman whose cancer cells ended up providing the foundation for vast scientific breakthroughs, including research about the coronavirus
The chief of the World Health Organization on Wednesday honored the late Henrietta Lacks, an American woman whose cancer cells were taken without her knowledge during the 1950s and ended up providing the foundation for vast scientific breakthroughs, including research about the coronavirus.
The recognition from WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus came more than a decade after the publication of “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” Rebecca Skloot's book about the discrimination in health care Black Americans faced, the life-saving innovations made possible by Lacks' cells and her family's legal fight over their unauthorized use.
“What happened to Henrietta was wrong,” Tedros said during a special ceremony at WHO Geneva headquarters before handing the Director-General’s Award for Henrietta Lacks to her 87-year-old son Lawrence Lacks as several of her other descendants looked on.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
Is this the same individual credited with providing cells for the Polio vaccine? You know, the one that Jonah Salk perfected? All these years it’s been a lie that Salk came up with the vaccine. He had to have the help of a woman’s cells.
Who knew?
She had really aggressive cancer. The tumor was cultured and grew successfully.
Her cancer was so aggressive that the cells contaminated other experiments.
Her cancer was so aggressive 20 tons of it have been grown.
They just keep growing. It was a huge deal and helped progress a lot of medical science.
And if I understand correctly the original polio vaccine was grown in monkey kidneys that were infected with cancer that did end up causing cancer in the recipients of that vaccine.
I don’t know if the HELA cells were used in polio vaccine refinement.
Science moves in fits and starts and grinds through the bodies of people who are sacrificed to it for the greater good.
She died of cancer.
They’re celebrating that.
It’s a weird idolatry of the New Religion.
Not a peep if it had been a white male.
I remember first reading about that when they thought it was Helen Lane. It was a very scary story to think that those living cells carry on so long after the woman herself is gone.
Exactly. The only thing the woman ever did was die. Because of her skin color they have turned it into a big whoop. I'm surprised that they haven't awarded her a Nobel Prize.
Objectively the medical services in the 1940s through the 1990s for blacks (and the poor/destitute) needing treatment could be very bad.
A key part of the Henrietta Lacks story is that informed consent was not received from Henrietta for the use of her samples. Yep, INFORMED CONSENT is at the heart of the angsty weeping and self flagellation about the treatment of Henrietta Lacks.
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