WHO honors Henrietta Lacks, woman whose cells served science

GENEVA (AP) — The main of the World Health Organization has honored the precocious Henrietta Lacks, an American pistillate whose crab cells ended up providing the instauration for immense technological breakthroughs.

Her cells became the archetypal “immortal” compartment enactment and person allowed for incalculable technological breakthroughs specified arsenic the quality papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, the polio vaccine, drugs for HIV and cancers, and astir recently, captious COVID-19 research.

The designation from WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus connected Wednesday came much than a decennary aft the work of “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.”

Rebecca Skloot’s publication chronicled the favoritism successful wellness attraction Black Americans faced erstwhile Lacks developed cervical cancer, the life-saving innovations made imaginable by her cells and her family’s ineligible combat implicit their unauthorized use.

“What happened to Henrietta was wrong,” Tedros said during a peculiar ceremonial astatine WHO Geneva headquarters.

The WHO Director-General’s grant was received astatine the WHO bureau by Lawrence Lacks, Henrietta Lacks’ 87-year-old son. He is 1 of the past surviving relatives who personally knew her.

“In honoring Henrietta Lacks, WHO acknowledges the value of reckoning with past technological injustices, and advancing radical equity successful wellness and science,” said Tedros. “It’s besides an accidental to admit women, peculiarly women of color, who person made unthinkable but often unseen contributions to aesculapian science.”