Telling the Story Of Henrietta Lacks, the Woman

You are missing some Flash content that should appear here! Perhaps your browser cannot display it, or maybe it did not initialize correctly.

RonLacks-0306.mp3

March 6, 2013

Henrietta Lacks' story is now well-known. Diagnosed with an aggressive type of cervical cancer in 1951 and treated at Johns Hopkins Hospital, samples of her cancerous tissue were removed, unbeknownst to her.

Decades later, her HeLa cells have become a revolutionary tool for researching and treating various diseases. Henrietta Lacks died 8 months after her diagnosis.

In 2010, Rebecca Skloot wrote "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks," bringing Henrietta's story and the question of bio-ethics to the attention of the public. 

While those close to Lacks, including her children, were featured in the book, the question of who gets to tell Henrietta Lacks' story lingers.

Henrietta Lacks was Ron Lacks' grandmother. His father is Lacks' eldest son Lawrence. Lawrence was 17-years-old when his mother died in 1951, and she left five children behind.

"He's the only child that really knew her," Ron Lacks said. 

When Sheilah Kast asked Ron if he thought it was a good thing that Skloot wrote "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks," he replied "It was a good thing. I wish the Lacks family would have been more involved in the making of the book-and the proceeds." 

Ron Lacks never met his now famous grandmother, and began to discover more about her as her story become public.

"What she did for the medical field-wow, it's still amazing. But, I would still like to look at her as grandma." 

Ron said he feels that some elements of his grandmother's story are still unknown, thus his father is shopping around a book that he wrote. Ron said the book will paint more of a picture of who his grandmother was to her family, and not just what her cells meant to the medical world.

"It's our story, it's a family story," Ron said. "Humanize the woman-separate the cells from the woman."

Ron Lacks is one of the co-founders of The Lacks Family HeLa Foundation, an organization that provides financial assistance to patients with cancer and other serious illnesses.

The University of Maryland's Second Biennial Henrietta Lacks Symposium [weather permitting] is being held Thursday, March 7.Registration is full, but to learn more about the Dignity of Difference symposium, visit UMD's website.

Tom Hall's 2010 interview with Rebecca Skloot is posted below, as is Sheilah Kast's 2010 interview with Dr. Ruth Faden of the Johns Hopkins Berman Instiute of Bioethics.

You are missing some Flash content that should appear here! Perhaps your browser cannot display it, or maybe it did not initialize correctly.

Tom Hall's 2010 interview with Rebecca Skloot

You are missing some Flash content that should appear here! Perhaps your browser cannot display it, or maybe it did not initialize correctly.

Sheilah Kast's 2010 interview with Dr. Ruth Faden