How did you first become interested in Henrietta Lacks and the HeLa cells?
I first learned about Henrietta when I was sixteen and in a basic biology class. My teacher mentioned HeLa cells, saying they were one of the most important tools in medicine, then almost as an aside, he said “They came from a woman named Henrietta Lacks, and she was black.” That was the moment I became obsessed with Henrietta. After class I asked whether her family knew about the cells and what her race had to do with them being alive, but my teacher said no one knew anything else about her, just her name and her race. I realize now that my questions weren’t obvious ones for a sixteen-year-old to ask, but something was happening in my life that I think primed me to ask questions about the cells. That same year, my father had gotten sick with a mysterious illness no one was able to diagnose. He’d gone from being my very active and athletic dad to being a man who had problems thinking, and he spent all of his time lying in our living room because he couldn’t walk. It turned out that a v
