ROANOKE, Va. -- A Virginia woman who played a massive role in medical history was honored Wednesday by The Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at Virginia Tech.
"The life of Roanoke’s Henrietta Lacks has left an enduring legacy on medical advancements, health care ethics, and patients’ rights," said Lee Learman, the Dean of the Virginia Tech School of Medicine. He continued, "Our students will look upon her statue each day as a reminder of the trust patients invest in their physicians and the origins of distrust felt by members of historically underserved communities. With this recognition, our hope is for future generations of physicians to continue shaping more inclusive and caring health care institutions for everyone."
Wednesday the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute, the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine, and the Carilion Clinic each unveiled statues of Henrietta Lacks in their facilities.
The bronze statues are miniatures – or maquettes – of the full-sized statue unveiled the same morning in Henrietta Lacks Plaza in downtown Roanoke on Henrietta Lacks Day in Virginia.
Henrietta Lacks' was born in Roanoke in 1920 and lived there before moving to Clover, Virginia and later Maryland. In 1951, she was treated for cervical cancer at Baltimore's Johns Hopkins Hospital. There some of her cancer cells were extracted for use in research without her knowledge or consent. At the time there were no federal regulation or restrictions on the use of patients' cells in research.
"We understand Henrietta Lacks’ place in Roanoke’s complicated history that regrettably included a time of segregated health care,” said Nancy Howell Agee, the Chief Executive Officer of the Carilion Clinic.
“Today, we affirm our determined commitment to identify and close gaps in health inequities. We’re humbled standing beside Mrs. Lacks’ likeness. We honor her for her cells’ role in medicine that has saved lives time and time again. And we celebrate her because her story has helped the health care community change the ethics guiding how we care for our patients," Agee would go on.
Lacks died in 1952 a year after her cells were extracted but those cells were unique in their ability to continuously grow and divide in the lab. Now called the "HeLa" cell line, they have enabled some of the most important advances in biomedical research.
Between 1953 and 2018, more than 110,000 scientific publications cited the use of HeLa cells, including, in three instances, Nobel Prize winning research, according to the National Institutes of Health.
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