The world owes a huge debt Henrietta Lacks: much of our modern health care was developed using cell lines grown from her tissue.  Henrietta was a working class black woman who died from cervical cancer in 1951 and the tissue that was so important was a biopsy of her cervical tissue, taken without good evidence of her having known or consented to that use (although the book does note that the lack of consent was in keeping with the medical ethics of its time). Today, […]