Fellow Scientists! There is no way to shield you innocents. We can’t sugar coat what we have all, as a community, done. This is an injustice that has gone on for too long. We have ALL experimented with HeLa cells before. Maybe you learned about them in college or high school. The real question is; do you know where those cells came from? Most of you will answer that they came from Henrietta Lacks, some of you won’t even know. Do you know the story of Henrietta Lacks? If not, I’m going to give you the basics right now. Henrietta Lacks was an African American woman who had cervical cancer in the 1940’s. The laws were much different back then, especially for African Americans. Henrietta’s cells (HeLa) were taken without her permission, experimented
