Episode details
Available for over a year
The World Health Organization is honouring an African-American woman today who played a crucial role in medical history but whose name is largely unknown and unrecognised. Henrietta Lacks died in Baltimore in 1951 of cervical cancer, and samples of her cancer cells were then collected by doctors without her or her family's knowledge or consent. These became the first living human cells ever to survive and multiply outside the body and this remarkable characteristic contributed to a series of crucial medical breakthroughs over the past 70 years, including the development of the polio, HPV and Covid-19 vaccines. Henrietta Lacks - who has been called the "mother" of modern medicine - will be honoured in a ceremony at the WHO headquarters in Geneva today. Several of her family members have travelled there and the 麻豆社's James Menendez has been been speaking to two of them: Alfred Lacks Carter is a grandson of Henrietta and Victoria Baptiste is her great granddaughter and a nurse. What does today mean to her? Photo: A photo of Henrietta Lacks sitting on mantlepiece of her grandson Ron Lacks, 2017 Credit: Getty Images
Programme Website