S5 Ep12: The Stolen Cells and Silent Legacy of Henrietta Lacks

Crimes of the Centuries

Amber Hunt and Audioboom

True Crime, Documentary, Society & Culture, History

4.6 • 3.8K Ratings

🗓️ 19 May 2025

⏱️ 47 minutes

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Summary

When Henrietta Lacks discovered a tumor inside of her in 1951, she turned to Johns Hopkins Medical Center for help. They examined her cells and discovered two things: First, she had cervical cancer. And second, her cells, for reasons we still can't explain, multiplied at astonishing rates, allowing doctors and pharmaceutical companies to use them to conduct all sorts of valuable research. Without Lacks knowledge or consent, her cells have been used to do amazing things, like create vaccinations for polio and HPV. But her case is most noteworthy for the ethical questions it forced us to face regarding medical consent, particularly within marginalized communities.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Some crimes are so heartbreaking or shocking, they change laws, change society, or even
0:12.4	earn the label, Crime of the Century. But the stories that made headlines and decades past
0:18.9	aren't necessarily remembered today.
0:22.6	I'm Amber Hunt, a journalist and author, and in each episode of this show,
0:26.8	I'll examine a case that's maybe lesser known today, but was huge when it happened.
0:33.9	This is Crimes of the Centuries.
0:46.3	Thank you. This is Crimes of the Centuries. From the outside, from a privilege point of view, Henrietta Lax's life was less than overly blessed.
0:57.8	It was, to be brutally honest, too troubled,
1:05.0	too poor, too painful, and too short. But it would change everything about how you and I live,
1:13.2	that we live in many cases, because her pain and her suffering meant the rest of us could avoid polio and the worst of COVID-19, survive cancer, be able to live with HIV, and not be subject to undue amounts
1:20.2	of radiation. And that's just for an opening act. Henrietta Lex's life after life has had a critical part to play in every medical research lab since the day she died at age 31.
1:34.3	Because her cells don't die, like ever.
1:39.0	Henrietta's biographer, Rebecca Scloot, told the BBC her cells were one of the most important things to happen to medicine.
1:46.9	They were used to help create the polio vaccine. They went up from her space missions to see what would
1:51.3	happen to human cells in zero gravity. They were used to create our most important cancer
1:55.3	medications like Benchristine and Tamoxifen. Her cells were the first ever cloned. Her genes,
2:00.7	some of the first ever mapped.
2:02.9	They were used to help develop in vitro fertilization. Basically, almost all of the vaccines we take
2:08.5	today can be traced back to research with her cells. There isn't a person out there who
2:12.2	hasn't benefited from research on her cells. Henrietta's living cells are in labs that research Parkinson, sickle cell, measles, mumps,
2:21.6	Zika, and Ebola.
2:23.1	They have single-handedly created the science of virology,
	...

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