The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (2017)

Henrietta Lacks was a Black tobacco farmer and a mother of five. In January 1951 she went to The Johns Hopkins Hospital with abnormal bleeding. A gynaecologist found a large malignant tumour on her cervix, and she began radium treatment.

During those treatments, two samples were taken from her cervix. She was not told, and she did not agree to it. One sample was healthy tissue. The other was cancer. That one went to a nearby laboratory and became HeLa. They were the first human cells to grow indefinitely in culture. Henrietta Lacks died on 4 October 1951, aged 31.

The film is mostly about what happened decades later. The science writer Rebecca Skloot tries to persuade the Lacks family to talk, and forms an uneasy partnership with Henrietta's daughter Deborah. Deborah swings between hunger for information and fury at another stranger asking questions. They visit Hopkins, see the cells under a microscope, and uncover records about Deborah's institutionalised sister Elsie. Deborah's health buckles under the strain. She died in 2009, before the book was published.

Spoilers throughout. Henrietta's death in 1951 and Deborah's in 2009 are both discussed here.

The film is careful about a fact that makes people uncomfortable. In 1951 no law was broken and nobody deceived anyone. Taking tissue during treatment and using it for research was routine, and consent for that use was not something anyone asked for.

That is the whole discomfort. The story has no villain. It is about a normal practice, applied at a segregated hospital, to a family who were told almost nothing. A vague phrase like "they took some cells" then curdles into rumour across two generations. Deborah grew up half believing that clones of her mother existed somewhere. The film treats that as a failure of explanation. That is exactly what it was.

Here is the gap this page exists to fill. Viewers leave with a lesson about consent and almost nothing about the disease.

Cervical cancer is caused almost entirely by lasting infection with high-risk human papillomavirus, or HPV. It is now one of the most preventable cancers there is. Screening finds cell changes before a cancer forms. Vaccination stops most of the infections that cause them.

The Pap test already existed in 1951. What did not exist was a national screening programme built around it, an HPV test, or a vaccine.

NCI says early cervical cancer usually causes no symptoms. Symptoms tend to begin after the cancer has spread. Henrietta Lacks went in because she was bleeding. That is already a late signal.

NCI lists these early-stage symptoms when they do appear:

• Vaginal bleeding after sex.
• Vaginal bleeding after the menopause.
• Bleeding between periods, or periods that are heavier or longer than normal.
• Watery vaginal discharge with a strong odour, or discharge containing blood.
• Pelvic pain, or pain during sex.

More advanced disease can add painful bowel movements or rectal bleeding, painful urination or blood in the urine, a dull backache, leg swelling, abdominal pain and fatigue.

Any of these can be caused by other things. They still need to be checked rather than waited out, even after a normal screening result.

The US Preventive Services Task Force gives cervical screening a grade A, its strongest rating. The schedule:

• Ages 21 to 29: cervical cytology, the Pap test, every three years.
• Ages 30 to 65: one of three options. Cytology alone every three years, high-risk HPV testing alone every five years, or HPV testing and cytology together every five years.

The Task Force recommends against screening under 21. It also advises against it after 65, for women who have been screened enough already and are not at high risk. And it advises against screening women who have had the cervix removed by hysterectomy, unless they have a history of a high-grade precancerous lesion or of cervical cancer.

The Task Force has this recommendation under review, so the schedule may change.

HPV vaccination prevents most of the infections that cause cervical cancer. It does not cover every high-risk type, and it does not undo an infection someone already has. People who have been vaccinated still need screening on the usual schedule.

Henrietta herself is nearly a prologue. Her illness and death take minutes. What cervical cancer does when it stops responding to radiation is left off screen. That includes severe pain, repeated transfusions, and kidney failure when the tubes from the kidneys get blocked.

Scenes are reordered and characters merged for pace. Skloot's decade of reporting feels like a single season. What the film does hold onto is the physical cost to Deborah of doing this work. It shows that without sentimentality.

There is no advertising on this page and nothing being sold. If the prevention story the film skipped was worth reading, you can help keep it free. Support our work.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a strong film about consent and a silent one about prevention.

The disease that killed Henrietta Lacks is now largely preventable. Screening finds the cell changes years before a cancer forms. Vaccination stops most of the infections behind them. That is the part of her story the film leaves for someone else to say.

• https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/henriettalacks/immortal-life-of-henrietta-lacks
• https://www.cancer.gov/types/cervical/symptoms
• https://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/uspstf/recommendation/cervical-cancer-screening

This page discusses The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks for education. It is not medical advice, and nothing here is a judgement of anyone's real medical care. Spotted an error? Please email corrections@cancerexplained.org.