Talk:Henrietta Lacks/Archive 1

older entries
Note to self (or anyone else having the time to incorporate it): the cell line is regarded as a new species, called Helacyton Gartleri. arj 15:51, 10 May 2004 (UTC)


 * If anyone does add this, be careful with the uppercase: it seems to be Helacyton gartleri, or at least that s what google has, and what s on the HeLa cell article. PaulDehaye 10:13, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * That's standard binomial name form: Genus species. --FOo 07:24, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

Change devolution to evolution. There is no such thing as devolution. See: devolution

Helacyton gartleri
Helacyton gartleri is thought of by some an example of the creation of a new species. The cells were transformed by infection with HPV and are replicating without the hayflick limit of most eucaryotic animal cells. They have a different chromosome number from human cells, and are genetically stable, but still evolving. The same could be said for other immortal cell lines that are chromosomally stable, and no longer have the same number of chromosomes of humans. Another example may be the infectious cancer cells found in Tasmanian devil that can be transmitted through bites. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 21:41, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Date of Birth?
The article says "August 18, 1920". The box below the picture says "October 20, 1911". --Robert Stevens 16:13, 8 March 2007 (UTC)


 * The article still says August 18, 1920 (which appears to be the most common date given elsewhere on the web, but that may be an echo of this article) -- but the box now says August 8, 1920. I'm going to unify as the 18th with a (?). Gojomo (talk) 22:08, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Date of death?
Along the same lines of the previous post, has anyone else noticed that the approximate date of the picture is 1945-50, but her date of death is 1940? I'd fix it, but not sure what exactly to fix it to....Banpei 00:59, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Children?
Same lines again -the article says she had 5 children, but only four names are given in the box below the picture

I would also like to add that the article stats "Eliza died giving birth to her tenth child in 1924", but later on in the article is states that she only had 5 children and died from a medical condition which was believed to be cervical cancer (in stark contrast to the original claim of death by child-birth). So which is correct? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Special:Contributions/ (talk) Eliza was the mother of Henrietta Lacks. Eliza died giving birth, and Eliza had ten children, not Henrietta. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.56.204.237 (talk) 04:59, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Tumorigenesis is not (ever) an evolutionary process?
As of July 20, 2007, this article recites in part, “With near unanimity, evolutionary scientists and biologists hold that a chimeric human cell line is not a distinct species, and that tumorigenesis is not an evolutionary process.” However, I could not find support for this assertion in the cited reference. Moreover, the assertion of this sentence seems to be contradicted by the hypothesized origins of at least two transmissible cancers: For this reason, I am rewriting this sentence to omit the assertion that tumorigenesis is not regarded as an evolutionary process. --Ryanaxp 21:32, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Devil facial tumor disease (DFTD) is a transmittable parasitic cancer of the Tasmanian Devil, first described in the scientific literature in 1995; and
 * Canine transmissible venereal tumor (CTVT) is a sexually transmitted cancer among dogs, of which a single malignant clone of CTVT cells has colonized infected dogs worldwide—it represents the oldest known malignant cell line in continuous propagation.
 * Neither of the specified theories calls anything an "evolutionary process". - Nunh-huh 02:28, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree. Nonetheless, the above-noted sentence still finds no support in its original form, either.  Further to this, while I also agree that "evolutionary process" is a poor descriptor, still, it seems that at least some somatic tumors may have in fact given rise to the parasitic cancers, DFTD and CTVT—i.e., tumorigenesis did lead at least to "speciation," which falls within the realm of an "evolutionary process" (no original research, yadda yadda yadda, notwithstanding). --Ryanaxp 15:31, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
 * While the material on the above diseases might not have included the specific phrase "evolutionary process," I think it seems obvious that infectious agents like these are under the same evolutionary pressures as any other. I think if you can imagine rabies is subject to the pressures of natural selection, then these must be too.  They aren't magically exempt because they came from malignant tumors.
 * However, if you need to see the exact words in your source, then I'd refer you to the source provided for the | April 11, 2008 edit by 168.7.245.220. The section in the book is entitled "Cancer as a Microevolutionary process" (and includes the subsection "Tumor Progression Involves Successive Rounds of Mutation and Natural Selection").  And this is in Molecular Biology of the Cell by Alberts et. al, one of the most widely used (and thus scientifically accepted) cell biology textbooks.  Based on such definitive statements from such a reliable source, I'm removing the statement again.Qwerty0 (talk) 13:22, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, that source has nothing to do with "Helacyton gartleri":it discusses cancer in general. If one uses it to "prove" that "Helacyton gartleri" is a species, one may also use it to "prove" that lung cancer is a species. In short, it doesn't say what the person who cited it thought it did. It simply makes the unremarkable claim that cancer cells compete. - Nunh-huh 23:50, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Biography?
This article no longer seems to be a biography but a tribute. The HeLa and Legacy sections now comprise the majority of this article's bulk which should not be the case: HeLa has its own article and the Legacy should be a quick summary of official or widely recognized honors. We do not really need to explain the reasoning for such honors because they are often verbose and, all too often, revisionist. In particular, to suggest that Lacks or her family made sacrifices or contributions to science is being nice but not honest and certainly not NPOV. What a biography is supposed to be is about the person's life. Another article with the same kinds of issues is the Terri Schiavo article: a "notable patient" whose importance was not recognized until after the onset of her brain damage. Maybe an RFC that includes those two and Rosalind Franklin would be good approach because Franklin also suffers from being a significant contributor to science who died too young, as compared to say, Marie Curie. An aid to achieving genuine NPOV is to state "just the facts" of what these people did and drain away the emotion that impels us to want make martyrs of them. We really need some guidelines about balance between NPOV fact and uniformity between these and other biographies.

The HeLa section does not have to establish the importance of HeLa, it should be restricted only to how it related to Lacks. Contrasting "mortality vs. immortality" is trite; it should only deal with how there was In the current version, we are told about five time about how quickly the cells grow. That is repetitive: we only need to be told that it grew quickly in her and it grows quickly in the petri dish. How is the "(anthropomorphic) phrases increased in the narratives" a fact? It is just an insinuation of soft racism and sexism.--Tonycointoss 23:39, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
 * No permission or knowledge, which was and is legal
 * How Lacks' name was released
 * It is important to remember that a biography is about a person. The HeLa cultures are not the person of Lacks, even if they eventually lead to clones of her. From the moment the tumor/samples are removed, they cease to be an important part of the biography.--75.37.14.196 (talk) 10:09, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Cleanup Tag
Refers specifically to the sections "Early Life" and "Later Life." The paragraph structure is very confusing. Additionally, the part about John marrying a thirteen-year-old seems somewhat irrelevant. --aciel 20:09, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

I disagree. She was infected at an early age with HPV, syphilis (which caused her second child's retardation) and gonorrhea. Her partner was also a first cousin, engaging in behavior that would be classified as incest or pedophilia today. --User:jenthr4 Aug 2010 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.40.163.187 (talk) 19:52, 4 August 2010 (UTC)


 * This article needs to be greatly improved to meet current standards for GA. It needs to be copy-edited for prose. The references need to be in one consistent style. Some information, as noted above, is unnecessary. Please consider making these changes. I may help in the coming days, but I'd prefer to not be the only one working on it.  Lara  ❤  Love  15:24, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

African-American?
Is she an African-American? If so, I think it should be stated clearly in the article. sentausa (talk) 03:14, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I think there was a wave of removing ethnic tags on people a while ago. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 03:16, 11 December 2007 (UTC)


 * But if it's not stated clearly, Hannah Landecker's discussions will be confusing. So, is she an African-American or not? I still don't know for sure. sentausa (talk) 03:52, 11 December 2007 (UTC)


 * She was black. She died in a segregated hospital ward for blacks. Like most American blacks, the question is more interesting than "black-or-white". See  - Nunh-huh 03:55, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Essay
I have moved the following essay from the biography. It is a hybrid of information on the cell line and on her, and doesn't fit in cleanly with the chronological order in her biography. It has the style of a personal stand alone essay. Any suggestions? --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 01:52, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

HeLa's immortality and Lacks' mortality
The HeLa cells or cell line  is immortal. Today, HeLa cells are commonly used in research laboratories as a model for human cells. Since HeLa was cultivated to live outside the human body, this cell line has since been used in thousands of experiments, contributing to the understanding of disease processes. In the past HeLa was used in Jonas Salk's development of the polio vaccine.

Mrs. Lacks was the human source of HeLa cell line and of this cell line's name. The word "HeLa" was devised by Gey by using the first two letters of Lacks' first and last names to keep her real name a secret. This worked for a while, leading some to think the human source of HeLa was "Harriet Lane", "Helen Lane", and others.

Various accounts on HeLa and Mrs. Henrietta Lacks differ over why and how she died, over whether or not (1) her cancer was metastasizing at an abnormal rate, faster than any other cancer; (2) whether she or her her husband were asked about the cultivation of her cells, or the future use of them; (3) over how her husband and her children were treated by physicians, researchers, scientists and science writers after her death, especially when the family members, now all past the age of twenty, were told that a sample of the cells could be studied to isolate genetic factors and to prevent cancer deaths in future generations; and (4) when her husband and her children actually learned about HeLa and the research using HeLa, and related issues involving the family's loss of privacy and anonymity.

When it came to informing Lacks or her husband (three of her five children were under the age of five years old) of the potential use of the cells, then as now there was no necessity to inform or ask for consent from a patient or relatives because discarded material, or material obtained during surgery, diagnosis or therapy, was and is the property of the physician or medical institution. Years later, this was the decision of the Supreme Court of California in the case of John Moore vs. the Regents of the University of California. The court ruled that a person's discarded tissue and cells are not his or her property and can be commercialized without permission or recompense. In the 1971 article cited above, it was reported that Mrs. Lacks was misdiagnosed with the slower-metastasizing epidermoid carcinoma, when in reality she had adenocarcinoma, a fast-metastasizing cancer. The article reported on this discovery, how they discovered this misdiagnosis, and stated further that  researchers may in the future discover what Gey had thought he discovered nearly twenty years. Some articles say that the HeLa cell line was originally cultured due to its tremendous proliferation rate, abnormally rapid even compared to other cancer cells. It is stated that it was this remarkably speedy proliferation which sealed Henrietta Lacks' fate. This misdiagnosis, it is said, would not have affected her chances of survival by the oncological standards of the day, her cancer being so fast-moving.. Other authors point to a general inattention to the report of a misdiagnosis.

According to anthropologist Hannah Landecker in Culturing Life: How Cells Became Technologies (2007), in "Between Beneficence and Chattel: The Human Biological in Law and Science" in Science in Context (1999), and in a chapter of Biotechnology and Culture: Bodies, Anxieties, Ethics (2000), narratives on Mrs. Lacks and HeLa have changed over time. In the earlier 1950's narratives, Lacks was portrayed as the "angelic", "beneficent", "heroic" and "self-sacrificing" donor of HeLa, which was considered to be a "standard" or a "universal", and Mrs. Lacks was "assumed to be white". (2000,64)

After 1966, argues Landecker, when it was found that HeLa was contaminating other cell lines (2007, 171),  and after her gender and race were also confirmed, the following adjectives, nouns, and phrases increased in the narratives: "voracious","vigorous", "aggressive", "malicious", "male-volent", "malignant", "surreptitious", "indefatigable", "renegade", "catastropic", "luxuriant", "undeflatable", "contaminating", "promiscuity", "wild proliferative tendencies," "colorful laboratory life", and even "a monster among the Pyrex". Some wrote about "world domination by HeLa" or about "HeLa taking over the world." Landecker, in addition, writes about narratives that "took on a racial grammar of miscegenation and heredity pollution" and that depicted HeLa cells as "racialized threats to scientific order".

In the 1980s and 1990s, according to Landecker, economic and monetary considerations began to be stressed, and there was a focus on "economic injustice", "economic exploitation", economic value, and "economic power and privilege". In the last instance, the poverty or educational levels of those at Johns Hopkins or such institutions is contrasted to the wealth, or educational level of the members of the Lacks' family. Three conventions, however, persist in these narratives: inclinations (1) to emphasize HeLa's immortality; (2), to "obscure" (2007, 171) and "mask" (2007,64) Lacks' death or misdiagnosis; and (3), to use her photographs, "as was the case"  with the tissue from a biopsy as well, "without any indication that permission was sought or given for its use, either from Lacks or her family". (2000, fn 61,264).

Landecker states that "Although it is difficult to say whether an accurate diagnosis of adenocarcinoma would have helped in Lack's treatment", what was evident to her was a "total absence of questioning of the circumstances and adequacy of her medical treatment --- even with the clearly stated admission of misdiagnostic error published in 1971" among scientists and journalists. To Landecker this "absence of questioning ... indicates the power of the concepts of immortality produced by the life of these cells." The "death of a person who was Henrietta Lacks has been obscured by the personification of her cells as an immortal entity".(2000,55)

The identification of HeLa has not just revealed the death of a specific human being, it has also focussed attention on the interactions between this and other American families with science writers and the media in general; with researchers, whether those in the social and natural sciences or the humanities; with scientists, including social scientists and government officials, including the military. Questions have also been raised regarding the education of Americans vis-a-vis the storage and use of human genetic material, including research and legislation issues. Public education on the subject has been recommended, but no measures have been implemented.

The problem as outlined by Landecker can be viewed as part of a larger issue identified by science writer Michael Gold that has yet to be addressed. Neither Henrietta Lacks nor HeLa is the main subject of Gold's Conspiracy of Cells: One Woman's Immortal Legacy and the Medical Scandal It Caused. He focuses most of his attention on Nelson Rees and his many, and probably career-ending, efforts to identify the contamination, which was occurring in the best medical and research institutions in the USA and abroad, and in the laboratories of the best physicians, scientists, and researchers, including Jonas Salk, as a problem that he named HeLa. He did not, however, mention an occurrence of a HeLa contamination problem in the laboratories run by either Rees himself or by Gey and his wife, nurse Margaret Gey. Gold states that this problem almost led to a cold war incident. Gold's concern was how much time, money and energy had been wasted in the war against cancer, not so much because of a HeLa contamination problem, but because of a problem he and others called "HeLa".

In his epilogue, Gold writes about the contamination problem: "There is more to the problem than a tenacious and hardy cell culture.... HeLa cells persist because they have always been helped along by a certain human element in science, an element connected to emotions, egos, a reluctance to admit mistakes...." Gold continues, "It's all human - an unwillingness to throw away hours and hours of what was thought to be good research...worries about jeopardizing another grant that's being applied for, the hurrying to come out with a paper first. And it isn't limited to biology and cancer research. Scientists in many endeavors all make mistakes, and they all have the same problems".

Gold ends his book with the following statement of a virologist who discovered another contamination problem: "A 'HeLa' ... is a scientific claim that sucks people into a line of work for a while, a line that is later refuted or shown to be a waste of time. It's a type of error in science that occurs fairly often. And it will continue to exist". Rather than recognize or focus on the problem of HeLa and on how to resolve it, many scientists, researchers and science writers continue to document this problem as a contamination problem, or as a problem caused by the  hardiness, tenacity, proliferating or overpowering nature or other characteristic of HeLa, the cell line created by  Gey, discovered by  Mary Kubicek, a laboratory assistant, and named  in this laboratory run by his  nurse wife after  this husband and wife team  had engaged  in almost two decades of research. Other authors continue  to focus on the issues surrounding the widespread HeLa contamination of cell lines used in research from the 1950s through at least the early 1980s as the major problem of HeLa in science. Recent data suggest that cross contaminations are still a major ongoing problem with modern cell cultures.

Author Rebecca Skloot has completed the first full length book focusing on the story of Henrietta Lacks and her family, which is being published by Crown Publishers.

Uniqueness of cells
It suggests at the end of the article that Lack's cells were unique in remaining alive. Shouldn't this be given greater relevance, or at least included much earlier in the text? Otherwise the reader is left wondering why this particular woman's cells were chosen.--86.14.45.250 (talk) 15:25, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I removed that section, since the idea that HeLa cells represent some kind of new species seems to be regarded as somewhat silly by the scientific community at large; a nearly identical section remains in the HeLa article, however. Ms. Lacks is notable with regard to the degree to which her cells were used in cancer research, but cells have been cultured from hundreds or thousands of tumors from dozens of species. The primary reason for her cells being so commonly used, as far as I can tell, is most likely that HeLa cells were one of the first established cell lines. Also, I can tell you from my own experience that HeLa cells grow very quickly, which can be very useful when you're working on a schedule. – ClockworkSoul 22:10, 6 December 2008 (UTC)


 * This still creeps back in the article. The HeLa cell line WERE unique, then. The immortal property of the cells is because they are cancer tells. Telomerare is not the only answer but a huge part. It's no mystery. And no, HeLa cells are not the only cells where the telomeres don't get shorter with each cell division. It's a common cancer mechanism which I assume every med student learns about. I'll try to remove some of the weird things. --Siden (talk) 18:32, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Helacyton gartleri
Hello, all. I hope I didn't step on any toes by removing the section about Leigh Van Valen's HeLa speciation proposal. Although my original thinking was that the assertion isn't notable because it isn't widely accepted by the scientific community, this is thoroughly negated by the fact that the article is widely cited as a counter to creationist arguments.

Organizationally, though, the mention is a bit out of place here, since this is a bio article about Ms. Lacks, and not her cells. Those have their own article, in which Dr. Van Valen's idea is already thoroughly described, rendering the mention here not only out of place, but redundant.

I would be very interested to read the article in its entirely. Would anybody happen to have an electronic copy of it available? I've been unable to track it down, and I fear that the journal may no longer be in print. – ClockworkSoul 12:07, 8 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree with your arguments, and have removed the section again. Let's hope it's not re-added again&mdash;as it was&mdash;without further discussion. - Nunh-huh 22:40, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

By all means delist the article if you want, but I do find some of your criticisms unfathomable, particularly "Wher(e)as "Legacy" talks about the application of her cancerous tumor, it is never mentioned in the sections describing her life." Would you care to be specific? Do you want the posthumous uses of her tissue discussed as if they were part of her life? I also think you are wrong in your assessment of the early life section; naming the subject's parents and mentioning the death of the subject's mother when she was four certainly seems to me to fit the heading. - Nunh-huh 17:33, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Gap in chronology
The article explains that Henrietta Lacks had a cancer, then she died, and a scientist used some of her tumor cells for polio research.

But how did that come about? Why was Mrs Lacks cancer cells chosen? Or for that matter, deemed acceptable? Were they extracted pre-death or post mortem? Was there consent on the part of the patient?

Then the article jumps ahead to the present day and what they are now used for in medical research. The End!

It's a huge jump. It's akin to being told Enzo Ferrari had a garage. He built racing cars. His sport car business is now one of the best in the world.

The point to what contribution Mrs Lacks was a concious donor, is the key point in the story, and it's completely missing from the story. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.130.135.125 (talk) 12:54, 2 January 2010 (UTC)


 * No, she was not approached for specific consent, and so she gave none. She did sign a consent for "any operative procedure" deemed necessary for treatment. Henrietta Lacks was diagnosed with cervical cancer by performing a biopsy. She was told the results on 5 February 1951 (she was in fact misdiagnosed), and she went in for treatment the next day. She was treated with radium: the procedure was to take the patient to an operating room, administer a general anaesthetic, dilate the cervix, insert a tube filled with radium into the cervix, and sew it in place. However, Dr. Richard Wesley TeLinde, who was studying the relationship between carcinoma in situ and invasive carcinoma - uncertain at that time - had asked that tissue specimens be collected from all women undergoing treatment for cervical carcinoma at Johns Hopkins Hospital. The tissue was given to Dr. George Gey, who was working on developing immortal human cell lines. Henrietta died eight months later on 4 October 1951. As far as can be determined, Gey and Lacks never met, and Henrietta died without knowing anything about her tissue being grown in a lab. Her name was first published as the origin of the cells in 1971. The first time Henrietta's family found out her cells had been used was in 1973. - Nunh-huh 05:22, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Testing against cancer cells
My question as a layperson-after reading the "Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" is the testing of other viruses, cosmetics, space changes--on abnormally growing cancer cells. Seems to me one would want healthy cell lines for research.66.129.59.55 (talk) 17:33, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
 * That's a great question, and one that we scientists discuss quite a bit. There are a number of reasons why immortalized cells (including cancerous cells) are used over non-cancerous ones. Sometimes whatever is being studied isn't much affected by whether the cells are immortalized (the investigators might have to convince any reviewers of that though). Often though, researchers use immortalized cells as a first step before moving on to non-cancerous cells (called "primary cells", since they usually have to be taken from a living source). Primary cells are much more complicated to work with for a number of reasons. They're usually harder to grow and generally divide only a few times before becoming senescent, so they have to be obtained regularly. Also, there are a number of ethical and legal issues associated with harvesting primary cells, especially human ones. Hope that helps. – ClockworkSoul 21:52, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

G6PDH
Some years ago when i was working in a medical research lab i needed to look for a 'marker' which indicated the origin of the DNA being expressed by a hybrid cell. I was 'making hybrid calls' by injecting HeLa (Henrietta Lack's) DNA into Physarum polycephalum. The most obvious marker - because it is a 'housekeeping' enzyme possessed by all cells is one which has the name G6PDH (glucose -6-phosphate dehydrogenase, it is an enzyme of glycolysis - a process which nearly all cells have to perform). G6PDHs from different sources vary in size and electrical charge and perform differently when made to migrate through a gel medium in an electric field (a process known as electrophoresis) The amount by which they migrate is characteristic of their origin. As a preliminary experiment to check the technique i prepared G6PDH from my own blood (i am a white European male), HeLa cells and Physarum. When i ran the test i expected to se my G6PDH 'run' at the same 'speed' as Henrietta Lacks' and the physarum test run differently. I was surprised to see that HeLa G6PDH 'ran faster' than my own. I researched the result. G6PDH derived from individuals of West African ancestry commonly exhibits a 'very fast moving subunit' (The G6PDH 'trace' can be double or, more rarely, quadruple.) So HeLa cells retain the indelible trace of Henrietta Lack's African origin. The story of Henrietta Lacks and the fact that her DNA still carries this marker after all this time and the millions of generations and passages of cells causes me to wonder, in bleaker moments, whether she is still kept in slavery. In another register, though, one might say that she still retains her proud and unconquerable heritage. i prefer the second. THANK YOU Mrs Lacks - we should celebrate your contribution!! Wattbob (talk) 11:30, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Fifty years?
Having just read the article, I was confused by one particular sentence in the "Legacy" section:
 * For their part, members of the Lacks family were kept in the dark about the existence of the tissue line, and when its existence was revealed in a 1976 Rolling Stone article by Michael Rogers, family members were confused about how Henrietta's cells could have been taken without consent and how they could still be alive 50 years after her death.

How in the world do you get 1976 as 50 years after her death? She was born in 1920 and died in 1951, or so the article claims -- 1976 is 25 years after her death. While multiplying by two makes it more dramatic, it does not make it more accurate. --OldManInACoffeeCan (talk) 14:33, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Later Life and Death
The final 5 paragraphs of the Later Life & Death section need more than a bit of work and some, at least in their current form, should disappear.

Starting from the bottom paragraph of the 5 (final paragraph of the section): The discussion of interaction between the black and white branches of the family, the spelling of the name, etc, have no particular relevance to Later Life & Death. The material is 'nice to know' background. Not sure where to place it or how to title it, but this is not where it belongs.

Next up (2nd paragraph from bottom of the section: The listing of cancers and causative factors is also not pertinent to her Later Life & Death. Same comments apply as above, in addition to which the in-line citationing appears contrary to practice.

The next 3 (3rd, 4th, & 5th paragraphs from bottom of the page): All are speculative, unsourced, and make it sound as though every instance of asbestosis, mesothelioma, etc in the US was traceable to Bethlehem Steel and, in particular, to the site at which her husband worked - hardly the case. Irish Melkite (talk) 05:07, 18 January 2011 (UTC)


 * I totally agree. I can't judge the validity of the science, but the 2nd through 5th paragraphs sound like original research to me. I was bold and removed them. The last paragraph makes sense now because it is about the location of her gravesite, Lackstown. Squandermania (talk)

Citation does not support statement in text
In the second to the last paragraph of "Diagnosis and Death" the second sentence reads as follows:
 * Lacks returned to Hopkins demanding to be admitted on August 8 and remained until her death.[1]

The reference cited, f.n. 1, does not support the above statement. Here is what the source says:


 * On Aug. 8, shortly after her 31st birthday, she was readmitted to Johns Hopkins for what would be the last time.

Please find a better source for the statement that she returned to Hopkins demanding to be admitted or reword this sentence. Ileanadu (talk) 17:46, 14 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Update - I found the exact language in the article in a book review of Skloot's book at jima.imana.org:

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:4BAKIJkgw1YJ:jima.imana.org/article/download/8609/43-2_10+&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESgSAMidHYJJjFGVF401GM-O_JD6PL52HXlVCb4juTFmzlHtKVMaKOju1HvbP6szyHJItqcCp3CiTmxedRM7IMZlFeacC5yaytd5A4Nnwm7oB2YbJtHqTz7ytyt3VG5zyIkCfjeK&sig=AHIEtbS6HGhbEnrY2Kf8OfptvuJJJH9F-w

But Skloot's book merely says:
 * "On August 8th, just one week after her thirty-first birthday, Henrietta arrived at Hopkins for her treatment, but this time she said she wanted to stay."

In other words, rather than receive treatment and go home, she wanted to be admitted to the hospital. There's nothing there about demanding. Therefore, I am editing the language in the article. Ileanadu (talk) 17:46, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

youngest or newest
The article describes Turner Station as one of the "youngest" African-American communities. Does this mean the youngest residents? Or does it mean the newest neighborhood? Ego White Tray (talk) 19:21, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

Headstone
It is confusing as to who provided the headstone for Henrietta Lacks. Was it Dr. Roland Pattillo, the individual, or the Morehouse School of Medicine, the institution?

First reference: In 2010, however, Dr. Roland Pattillo of the Morehouse School of Medicine donated a headstone for Lacks after reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.[13] The headstone, which is shaped like a book…

The second reads: In May 2010, The Virginian-Pilot published two articles on Lacks, HeLa, and her family,[1][32] which mentions that the Morehouse School of Medicine has donated the money for Henrietta's grave as well as her daughter Elsie, who died in 1955, to finally have headstones. 85.53.130.166 (talk) 19:34, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

African American
An editor using at least two IPs has removed Ms Lacks' race from the article. I have restored it as my understanding of the story makes it very clear that this is a relevant piece of the story. Comments/concerns? - Sum mer PhD  (talk) 13:57, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Is Dr. Gey mentioned too prominently?
The cell culture work of Dr. Gey was certainly important, however I see that he is mentioned (and linked to) twice in this article while the name of the physician who removed Mrs. Lacks' cells was not mentioned specifically once here (though was mentioned in the page for Dr. Gey). My concern is that the way it is written may cause some readers to erroneously conclude that Dr. Gey himself removed the cancerous cells from Mrs. Lacks. It does not appear that the physician has a wikipedia entry yet (although he might not necessarily warrant one) but his name probably should be brought up to make it clear that Dr. Gey did not himself remove the cells from Mrs. Lacks.

I don't know when the previous was added. As of 2014, her John Hopkins physician does have a wikipedia entry, so I added the wikilink.Jweaver28 (talk) 21:26, 13 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks for catching that. I wrote the Jones entry and I try to be good about establishing wikilinks, but I missed this obvious one. In regard to the previous question, the reliable sources that I've seen often describe Gey's role in the most detail of any player in this story.  EricEnfermero  HOWDY! 01:58, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on Henrietta Lacks. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20110417143427/http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8448974573505946013 to https://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8448974573505946013

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Cheers. —cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 07:41, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

Stuff I just removed
FYI I just removed a chunk from the In the media section that was essentially a list of newspaper mentions that didn't elaborate on any substance or why those particular articles were especially noteworthy. IMHO there are enough really important media mentions of Lacks that we don't need to take up space with ones that weren't a big deal. One of the sentences I removed said Lacks was honored by the Smithsonian, but it didn't say that in the source. It was just an article in the Smithsonian Magazine about Lacks with an interview with Skloot. PermStrump (talk) 07:37, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

Erroneous names in lead
Before this edit, the parenthetical citation in the first sentence of lead also said, "Henrietta Lacks (1 August 1920 – 4 October 1951;[2] sometimes erroneously called Henrietta Lakes, Helen Lane, or Helen Larson)". I removed the erroneous names (temporarily?) b/c it doesn't conform MOS:INTRO which states that the lead should be a summary of content from the body of the article and there wasn't any explanation about the erroneous names in the body. I think it's worth noting, but I'm not sure where it fits best. I'm pretty sure WP:BOLDTITLE doesn't apply to wrong names, especially ones that aren't the commonly used name for the subject. IMHO, the erroneous names aren't notable enough to warrant mention in the lead anyway, but I wouldn't necessarily argue if someone else wanted to put an explanation about it in the lead (without bolding) after it's added to the body. PermStrump (talk) 16:01, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

Kurzgesagt Video
I added the following:

In 2016, a Kurzgesagt video mentioned HeLa cells, raising the question of how much of Henrietta Lacks is still alive in her immortal cells.

And it was reverted by User:Permstrump due to "undue weight". I can hardly understand why it's undue weight, considering that the video was viewed over **3 million** times on Youtube, and the Kurzgesagt channel has 2.7 million subscriptions, making it one of the biggest youtube channels.

Wladston (talk) 02:03, 6 August 2016 (UTC)


 * "Per MOS:POPCULT and WP:INDISCRIMINATE, we don't want to list every piece of media that ever made passing mention of Lacks and this video hardly discusses her. Also, youtube is not considered a reliable source because it's usergenerated. I looked for reliable sources to add as a reference, but the video apparently wasn't noteworthy enough to be mentioned by outside sources. Noteworthiness is the bare minimum criteria for including anything in an article. The number of views on youtube is not an indicator of cultural significance as far as WP's concerned. —PermStrump  ( talk )  08:32, 6 August 2016 (UTC)

Revisions
The statement about Henrietta's family calling Elsie "deaf and dumb" in the Personal Life section is not accurate of the article it was cited from. The article says that "some" call her that and not her family directly. I would change the formatting of this sentence so that it represents the citation better.

The link for uremic poisoning goes to a page about acute kidney injury which is not the same thing. This can be fixed by adjusting the link so that it goes to the uremia definition.

The third paragraph in the Personal Life section needs a reference for all of sentences that talk about Fred Garrett's influence on their life. The citations listed are for the facts about Turner Station, there is nothing about the Lacks family in the citations listed.

MadisonWilson (talk) 12:40, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

Pattillo
—PermStrump ( talk )  10:05, 28 October 2016 (UTC)
 * According to this article, Pattillo was the one spearheading the event in 1996 when Lacks was recognized for the first time. The current wording makes it sound like he just picked up after someone else started it.
 * Current: In 1996, the Morehouse School of Medicine and the mayor of Atlanta recognized Lacks's family for her posthumous contributions to medicine and health research.[25] Since then, Morehouse faculty member Dr. Roland Pattillo, who had worked with George Gey at Johns Hopkins, continues to bring recognition to Lacks's name by holding annual conferences in her honor.[13][26]
 * Previous: In 1996, physician Roland Pattillo with the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia, and the mayor of Atlanta recognized Lacks's family for her posthumous contributions to medicine and health research.[25] Since then, Pattillo, who previously worked with George Gey at Johns Hopkins, continues to bring recognition to Lacks's name by holding annual conferences in her honor.[13][26]
 * Honestly I'm not fond of the phrasing in either version - they both seem somewhat clunky or inelegant to me. I think that that the institutional sponsoring of the conference by the Mayor & the Morehouse School of Medicine was what I was going for in the Previous version...that it wasn't a one-time event with no institutional muscle behind it. Despite what the Pilot Online article seems to state, to say that Pattillo alone was holding the conferences isn't quite what I am getting at.  He spearheaded the conferences but he wasn't doing it all by himself, that's all.  Unfortunately the best write-up I can find about the first conference is behind a ScienceDirect paywall -
 * Pattillo, Roland, A. “Morehouse School of Medicine First Annual Women’s Health Conference: The HeLa Cancer Control Symposium.” American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, June 1997, pp. 2258-2268. here, also the cited reference (Ref 25) has gone bad (so I've removed it from the reader's view). I thought maybe MSM had changed their URLs but I can't find Ref 25's info anywhere on the MSM.edu's website. I am fairly certain the first conference was held at the Martin Luther King Jr Chapel in Atlanta but right now I can't find anything that says the mayor's office was involved.  If someone has access to Science Direct/AJOG that would probably be very helpful.  I went ahead and changed the phrasing accordingly, maybe this latest version is better.  (One note - I thought it would be redundant to mention again that Pattillo had known George Gey since that fact was already stated in the Death and burial section.) Shearonink (talk) 15:41, 28 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Feel free to adjust the wording etc of my latest version...I'm not holding tight to it. Shearonink (talk) 15:59, 28 October 2016 (UTC)


 * Pattillo is the one who introduced Rebecca Skloot to the Lacks family. If he hadn't done those introductions, I doubt that Skloot would have been able to tell the HeLa story. See here and, most importantly, on page 231 of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Shearonink (talk) 20:46, 28 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Oh, ok. I couldn't figure out which source that came from, because it wasn't in the one there. I read the book probably 5 years ago, so I didn't remember he introduced Skloot to the family. His name didn't even sound familiar to me. :) I've also been thinking I must have lent my copy to someone, because I haven't been able to find it to use as a source when I've edited this article in the past. I just now remembered that I bought the ebook, not the real book, so now I have it again. Yay! I can access most things behind paywalls too, so I read the ScienceDirect article you linked. It says his title is/was Symposium Director and some other interesting tidbits about the HeLa cells and their impact on medicine that I'm going to look to see if they might fit in the article. —PermStrump  ( talk )  23:26, 28 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks for finding that other source for the Dundalk Eagle. I finally read that article (it's not even behind a paywall at the original source anymore - http://www.dundalkeagle.com/telling-the-story-in-their-own-words/article_71ced089-50cb-5b10-b091-c68e571ab321.html ...mysteries of the internet age...)  Anyway, I read that "in their own words" article and there's nothing in it about Henrietta Lacks.  It mentions that there is an organization called "the Henrietta Lacks Legacy Group" but no details about the group etc - just that it exists.  And certainly nothing about the Lacks family's stories, keeping "the youngest children out of unsafe living environments following their mother's death" etc.  I'm going to remove the ref because it's not really referencing/sourcing/proving anything pertinent to the article at this point. Shearonink (talk) 01:16, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

Moved as POV
There is controversy, however, concerning the use of her cells without her permission, particularly since she was an African-American woman, a historically disempowered group in the United States (especially during the 1950s). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk • contribs) 16:55, 23 January 2007 (UTC) (UTC)

Confusion on classism versus deliberate misleading.
These two lines seem to be misleading in that the only reason the Lacks family is unaware of HeLa is for racial issues.

''Suspicions fueled by racial issues prevalent in the South were compounded by issues of class and education. For their part, members of the Lacks family were kept in the dark about the existence of the tissue line, and when its existence was revealed, family members were confused about how Henrietta's cells could have been taken without consent and how they could still be alive 50 years after her death. ''

But in the main article of the entry, it is stated that not receiving consent for testing has been a long term medical practice.

Prior to receiving treatment for the tumor, cells from the carcinoma were removed for research purposes without her knowledge or permission, which was standard procedure at that time.

It seems there has been quite a bit of confusion by the family due to lack of understanding than being deliberately lied to. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.249.4.54 (talk • contribs) 16:49, 28 April 2010 (UTC) (UTC)

The Term "African American" as Used in this Article, and in General
On the "New Lacks Family" website, at no time does her family refer to her as "African American." Use of the term "African American" to refer to those who identify as "black" is a construct of American liberal politics and has no business being used in an ostensibly unbiased "free encyclopedia." Further, the term "African American" implies dual citizenship in both Africa and America and therefore can be misleading. Again, further, Wikipedia's article on Dame Shirley Bassey, a Welsh performer who happens to be black, at no time refers to her racial identity. Therefore, the term "African American" should be removed from this article, and indeed, from any article that does not refer to a person of dual African and American citizenship.184.101.80.46 (talk) 20:37, 24 April 2017 (UTC)
 * The article African American addresses this. See the section on terminology in particular. As with German American or Irish American, the term denotes ethnic background, not nationality. Additionally, you may note that it was first popularized by black Americans. You might have a point regarding whether we should even mention ethnicity or race in biographies, but that's not a topic for this talk page. clpo13(talk) 21:26, 24 April 2017 (UTC)
 * How could someone have African citizenship when Africa is not a country? Rivertorch   FIRE WATER   03:07, 25 April 2017 (UTC)
 * I'll not touch on the usefulness of the term "African American" but certainly mentioning race in the lead section is not appropriate. It has nothing to do with why the topic is notable and so can seen as potentially racist to mention so prominently. I have moved that mention into the "Personal Life" section.--MC 141.131.2.3 (talk) 20:56, 15 January 2018 (UTC)
 * It is not racist. It is who she was, and at least arguably, it affected both her treatment and later recognition.  Ignoring or burying it doesn't make it go away.  7&amp;6=thirteen (☎) 12:28, 16 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Numerous mainstream sources are found that consider her race relevant
 * https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/henrietta-lacks-immortal-cells-6421299/
 * https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/oprah-film-introduces-henrietta-lacks-woman-who-changed-modern-medicine-n745741
 * https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/31/henrietta-lacks-cancer-research-genome
 * William Avery (talk) 13:12, 16 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Again, mentioning somebody's race in the lead is inappropriate unless you expressly use it in a context explaining why it is notable. I don't have a big problem with mentioning the racism behind the HeLa line in the lead section but the lead section does not do so nor does it provide any context or reason for mentioning race.-- MC — Preceding unsigned comment added by 141.131.2.3 (talk) 19:16, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
 * We understand what you said. I disagree, and we will have to agree to disagree.  Please sign your posts using four tiles ~ 23:14, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Recent edit about informed consent
A recent edit removed sourced content re informed consent not being common around 1951 and added content & sources about informed consent being a more common practice. The informed consent that is mentioned in the additional sources is only concerned with treatment of individual patients, with experiments being done on their bodies without their knowledge, and that they need to be asked for consent for possible treatments or tests. The removal of the cervical cancer cells from Henrietta Lacks' body and their subsequent culture had nothing to do with her treatment, it had to do with research that was beyond the scope of her medical treatment and care. Perhaps I am wrong on this but it is my understanding that tissues can be removed today from patients' bodies and cultured and what results from those cultures does not belong to the patient but rather belongs to the researchers/physicians/institutions - the patient is not asked for consent for any possible testing or usage beyond the initial tests. For that reason I removed the new content and its sources for further discussion here on this talkpage. Perhaps we can all come to a consensus about what should or should not be included on this matter. Shearonink (talk) 20:03, 1 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I would say that the biopsy done on Henrietta Lacks was for the purposes of diagnosis, and thus was for the purposes of guiding her treatment. Have a look at  and see what you think. "Thus, if Henrietta Lacks were a patient in the United States today [i.e., 2016], biospecimens collected solely for her clinical care would not require her consent for use in research. Any part of such specimens remaining after all the analyses needed for her care were completed might be stored for generic teaching, quality assurance, and research purposes, as briefly disclosed in a general consent-to-treat form. Researchers seeking to study stored clinical specimens could do so without her consent if an IRB determines either that the proposed research does not involve human subjects (based primarily on their having no access to identifiers) or that it meets the criteria for exemption from the regulations or waiver of the requirement to obtain consent. An IRB-approved research protocol and informed consent (unless waived) would be required when researchers prospectively intend to use clinical specimens for a specific project, including plans for use of residual specimens as well as taking more tissue than is needed for clinical care (i.e., taking extra tissue for research purposes during a necessary clinical procedure). Collecting biospecimens from family members solely for research purposes would require an IRB-approved protocol and informed consent." - Nunh-huh 00:17, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

Missing documentary (Tom Baker Narrated)
There was a documentary produced in the 1990s, I think, with Tom Baker narrating. I think it was on Channel 4 in the UK. But this isn't listed in the article or in Tom's IMDB or Wikipedia entry. It might pre-date the 1998 BBC Adam Curtis documentary. Maybe someone has access to this information and can add it to the article (and wherever else it should be). DavidFarmbrough (talk) 20:50, 5 February 2019 (UTC)
 * I was unable to find any 1990s Henrietta Lacks' documentary narrated by Mr. Baker. I was even unable to find any mentions of this Tom Baker narrated/1990s documentary. Frankly, I'm kind of thinking that if I can't find it, can't even find a mention of it?...then maybe it might not exist. The only thing I can think of is to contact Mr. Baker's agents or his management team - probably his voice/narration agent - to ask if he did the narration for a Henrietta Lacks documentary. Shearonink (talk) 03:47, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

10 ton womb
When I was doing biochemistry, there was gestimation done that suggests that globally there's about 10 ton of Hela cells. Which means that there is more of Henrietta Lacks now than when she was a living human being. That's a metaphysical question that needs answering, if there are more of her than she is as a person, she has outgrown her own physicality. And by that if she is "dead" how can there be more of her alive than when she was alive? 81.141.39.255 (talk) 19:10, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
 * "That's a metaphysical question that needs answering,"
 * Only if published reliable sources delve in-depth into the metaphysics of all those immortal cells. Shearonink (talk) 22:04, 8 November 2020 (UTC)


 * I've removed the following assertion: "Since the 1950s, scientists have grown as much as 50 million metric tons of her cells" - despite it being sourced (cite news | url=https://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/07/books/review/Margonelli-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 | title=Eternal Life | work=New York Times | date=2010-02-05| access-date=2014-04-23 | author=Margonelli, Lisa | location=New York) because it sounds like a units conversion error. 50 million grams (50 metric tons) might be a high estimate of the number of cells ever grown. But 50 million metric tons? That would be more biomass created from HeLa cells than in one billion humans. Unlikely. - Pro hib it O ni o ns (T) 22:15, 27 December 2020 (UTC)
 * User:ProhibitOnions I disgree.  WP:Verifiability in WP:RS.  Not WP:Truth.  7&amp;6=thirteen (<b style="color:#000">☎</b>) 22:32, 27 December 2020 (UTC)


 * This is a tricky one, as this factoid appears in several reliable sources, but they all take it from Rebecca Skloot's 2010 book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks - note that almost all retain the "metric tons" phrasing and the "more than 100 Empire State Buildings" comparison. Skloot also presents another figure using "feet" and number-of-times-round-the-earth that suggests another amount several orders of magnitude lower. (And note that the "more than 350 million feet" figure was almost certainly a backconversion from 100,000 km - which is actually somewhat less than three times around the earth.)


 * Ari Schulman, writing in the New Atlantis, challenged these assertions: "More importantly, however, if you try to make sense of these figures you will find that at least one and probably both are obviously false." And after apparently being questioned about this many times, Skloot defended these assertions in her FAQ:


 * "People sometimes ask how that 50 million metric tons figure was determined: It came from calculating how many cells could have ever grown — it was a hypothetical calculation because that many cells couldn’t have been saved and put on a scale. That calculation was based on the way HeLa cells are known to divide (specifically how often they double their numbers) and the amount of time they’d been alive at the time the calculation was made. The details of who developed that calculation and how it worked are in the notes section of the book."


 * So it would be good if someone can have a look at the book and see how she arrives at this figure. Because there are several problems with this assertion - it's hypothetical, derived from a single source that is apparently more comfortable with US legacy measurements than with the metric system, challenged by reputable scientists, and it's old - from 2010. Imagine how much more biomass would have been produced since then, if this figure were already true ten years ago. And there's the smell test - where the hell did it all go?


 * We've had issues like this on Wikipedia before, such as Ich bin ein Berliner - in which numerous reliable sources repeated something that turned out to be a single source that had been misinterpreted. Interestingly, German Wikipedia quotes a NYT article that repeats the 50 million tons figure, but corrects it to 50 tons - one-millionth of the asserted amount - but still a staggering amount of biomass generated from a few cells. Hence, the best solution is to remove the assertion until it can be examined further. - Pro hib it O ni o ns <sup style="font-size:x-small">(T) 07:32, 28 December 2020 (UTC)

Tobacco farmer? Or not...
The article states in the infobox that Henrietta Lacks' occupation was that of being a tobacco farmer relying on the cited 2010 article in The Virginia Pilot that "Hennie and Day married in 1941, and the family left their life of farming tobacco to join the flood of blacks making their way to Baltimore and Washington, D.C., where wartime prosperity awaited in the shipyards and steel mills." That cite has been challenged as failing verification. So. The question now before us is...can Henrietta Lacks have her occupation be characterized as a tobacco farmer since that is the only occupation cited or is she not. Other references refer to Henrietta Lacks as a tobacco farmer: Let's discuss. Shearonink (talk) 09:05, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Toronto Star "How poor tobacco farmer Henrietta Lacks became a medical superstar after her death"
 * Stanford Medicine News "African-American tobacco farmer and mother in the 1950s"
 * Smithsonian Magazine "She was a black tobacco farmer from southern Virginia who got cervical cancer when she was 30"
 * Rebecca Skloot's "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks refers to the Lacks family farming tobacco repeatedly, take a look at Page 24: "So after their wedding, Day went back to gripping the splintered ends of his old wooden plow as Henrietta followed close behind, pushing a homemade wheelbarrow and dropping tobacco seedlings into holes in the freshly-turned red dirt."
 * Thanks. According to the book listed above "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" Page 26: "The morning after he came barreling into town, Fred bought Day a bus ticket to Baltimore. They agreed Henrietta would stay behind to care for the children and tobacco until Day made enough for a house of their own in Baltimore, and three tickets north. [...] Soon, with a child on each side, Henrietta boarded a coal-fueled train from the small wooden depot at the end of Clover's Main Street. She left tobacco fields of her youth [...] At the age of twenty-one, Henrietta stared through the train window at rolling hills and wide-open bodies of water for the first time, heading towards a new life". On Page 16: "Before examining her, he [Howard Jones] flipped through her chart - a quick sketch of her life [...]: six or seventh grade education; housewife and mother of five". On Page 27: "Henrietta went about life as usual, cleaning and cooking for Day, their children, and the many cousins who stopped by."
 * * Washington Post 25 June 2018 "The cells were retrieved from Henrietta Lacks, a housewife and young mother of five children"
 * * The Virginian Pilot "Sadie moved to Baltimore in the mid-1940s and often caught the No. 26 trolley to Turner Station, where Hennie had settled in as a housewife in the brick apartments built for the workers swelling the waterfront."
 * * Washington Post 8 Oct 2018 "Lacks was a young housewife when she went to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore for bleeding."
 * * Nature "Henrietta Lacks loved to cook — spaghetti was a favourite — and she loved to dance, often with one of her five children in her arms. She dressed stylishly and wore red nail polish."
 * What I see is Henrietta had left tobacco farming since she moved to Baltimore to be a housewife for the last decade (one-third) of her life, furthermore, the description of her and her living in Baltimore looks far from a "poor tobacco farmer" characterized by other publications. --Now wiki (talk) 08:37, 23 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I see your point, I really do - yes she was a housewife for the latter part of her life (thanks for finding those sources) - but I don't think it is necessary to erase what Henrietta Lacks was for the majority of her life - a tobacco farmer. So far as I can tell, the reliable sources are stating that she had two "jobs" in her life, being a tobacco farmer *and* being a housewife. It makes sense for both occupations to be in the infobox, labeling one as failing verification seems somewhat unnecessary since that deletion is not borne out by the cited sources. The "vpbio" ref has both the housewife & tobacco farmer information so for now I've adjusted the infobox accordingly (I'll add Skloot cites as soon as I figure out what is going on to still engender so *many* Harv errors.) See what you think - Shearonink (talk) 18:19, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

Harv cite issues
There are presently 12 Harvard cite errors in the article, all connected to Skloot's book. I'm posting about it here in the hopes that someone who isn't driven crazy by Harv cite nomenclature can figure out what is wrong with all these various references: Ref 2, 7, 8, 9, 13, 15, 17, 18, 19, 29, 30, 35. Thanks, Shearonink (talk) 09:14, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
 * <b style="color:#060">7&amp;6=thirteen</b> (<b style="color:#000">☎</b>) 13:29, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Much thanks to the freakishly talented Wikipedian User:7&amp;6=thirteen - I just couldn't figure out how to get it done and gave up. Shearonink (talk) 17:33, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I've been perfecting this for years. Smith & Wesson was one I especially remember.  It was a citation mess (whew!!) that I was able to cure – bringing order out of the chaos.  That was a monumental job.  It is a big encyclopedia, and we can't know it all.  We have complementary skills. That is one of Wikipedia's strengths. <b style="color:#060">7&amp;6=thirteen</b> (<b style="color:#000">☎</b>) 17:50, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
 * 7&amp;6=thirteen Hmmmm...just took another look and realized that there are still 12 Harv cite errors, they are only 2x (as opposed to the previous 4x), plus there are also 11 Harv warnings. I'll poke around and see if I can figure out what is going on, but just in case I'm not successful... Shearonink (talk) 18:51, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

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