She was a tobacco farmer from southern Virginia who got cervical cancer when she was 30. A doctor at Johns Hopkins took a piece of her tumor without telling her and sent it down the hall to scientists there who had been trying to grow tissues in culture for decades without success. No one knows why, but her cells never died and now "He La" cells are used all over the world.
Henrietta's cells were used to help develop the first polio vaccine, they took a trip into space, & have been used many times since then.
Henrietta died without ever knowing what a huge impact her living cells would make on the world.
Click here to read the Smithsonian article
Click here to read the Wikipedia article
Ghafla stated: I think she looks alot like Robin Roberts from Good Morning America.
