Henrietta & Harriet:

This morning, I woke to this headline: “Henrietta Lacks’s Family Settles Suit With Novartis Over Use of Her Cells.” Seeing that after I just finished reading Truevine by Beth Macy last night, was a bit mindboggling.

I read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot years ago. Surprisingly both Henrietta and Harriet Muse had lived in the same neighborhood. Both were used and discarded by the white establishment. Those two women fought their battles with life is just a little more than a half hour from my home.

Henrietta’s biggest fight was with cervical cancer which ultimately killed her. As she lay dying in a segregated ward at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, my hometown. I was one-year-old when cells from her body—now known as HeLa cells—were harvested in 1951 without her permission. The HeLa cells were reproduced in laboratories and used in creating vaccines for polio and CoVid-19 and in the treatment of cancer, Parkinson’s and the flu. In the time these cells—part of Henrieta’s body—have been mentioned in scientific journals more than 100,000 times.

Finally, after seven decades of earning profits off of Henrietta, Novartis has agreed to share the money with Ms. Lacks’s family. In 2023, her descendants reached a settlement with Thermo Fisher Scientific as well. Aand there are pending cases against Viatris and Ultragenyx and the battle continues.

Harriet’s biggest struggle was with the white power structure during the height of Jim Crow. Her two albino sons ended up in a circus sideshow with other “freaks.” It is not known if they were kidnapped or borrowed and never returned. They worked for decades without getting paid a penny. Harriet fought to bring them home and when they returned to the circus to make sure they were treated fairly and given wages for their work.

If you haven’t read these books, you should add them to your library now. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot and Truevine by Beth Macy.