Last week, the National Institutes of Health reached a landmark agreement with the family of Henrietta Lacks, the unknowing donor of cancer cells widely used in scientific research.
For over six decades, an immortal line of cells, known as "HeLa cells," have been helping to produce medical breakthroughs around the world. Somewhere, lost in the research and the science, was the story behind this remarkable line of cells: Why were they the first line of human cells to survive in vitro? Where did they come from? And who was the person from which they grew?
Those were the questions that led a young...
