AP BIOLOGY

Detailed explanation-1: -As a young mother, Henrietta Lacks and her husband were raising five children near Baltimore when she fell ill. She went to Johns Hopkins after experiencing extensive vaginal bleeding and was diagnosed with cervical cancer. Despite treatment, it cut her life short on 4 October 1951. She was only 31 years old.

Detailed explanation-2: -In the early 1980s, German virologist Harald zur Hausen found that HeLa cells contained multiple copies of human papillomavirus 18 (HPV-18), a strain of HPV later found to cause the type of cervical cancer that killed Lacks.

Detailed explanation-3: -Lacks began undergoing radium treatments for her cervical cancer. This was the best medical treatment available at the time for this terrible disease. A sample of her cancer cells retrieved during a biopsy were sent to Dr.

Detailed explanation-4: -However, Lacks’s cancer had quickly spread throughout her body and by September of 1951, Lacks’s internal organs were almost entirely covered in cancerous tumors. Lacks died on 4 October 1951, with the official cause of her death being terminal uremia.

Detailed explanation-5: -Henrietta Lacks died of cervical cancer in 1951 at the untimely age of 31. Surgeons at Johns Hopkins harvested cells from her tumor without her permission or the knowledge of her family. These cells became the basis for the first immortal human cell line, HeLa (Henrietta Lacks).