The following is an encore presentation of Everything Everywhere Daily.

Henry at a lax was a mother of five who died of cervical cancer in 1951 at the age of 31. Before she passed a tissue

sample of her cancer cells was taken. Those cells have become the basis for

decades of cancer and biological research and have also been at the center of one of the greatest

medical ethics controversies in modern times.

Learn more about the immortal Henrietta Lacks on this episode of Everything Everywhere

Daily. Henry Lax was born in 1920 in Roanoke, Virginia. She was an African-American woman whose mother died

when she was four years old, giving birth to her tenth child. Her father was

unable to raise ten young children, so Henrietta was sent to live with her grandfather. She was

literally raised in the log cabin which served as the slave quarters on the

plantation which was once owned by her white great grandfather. Her grandfather was a tobacco farmer.

Henrietta went to school at a segregated school for blacks and dropped out after the sixth

grade so she could help on the farm.

She had her first child at the age of 14 and her second at the age of 18. the At the age of 20 they moved to Turner Station, Maryland.

Her story up until this point is actually not that remarkable for the era and the place.

People had children earlier back then and marrying a first cousin wasn't unheard of in the rural

south. The particulars of this story really began in January of 1951. She told

her relatives that she felt she had a knot in her womb.

They told Henrietta that she was probably pregnant, which in fact she was, but there was something

else.

After she gave birth, she suffered severe hemorrhaging.

In August of 1951, she was referred to the Johns Hopkins Medical Center,

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