Difference Makers Day 3

Difference Makers Series Day 3: Henrietta Lacks. Henrietta Lacks proves that sometimes, you can drastically change the world and not even know it. Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor black tobacco farmer whose cells—taken without her knowledge in 1951—became one of the most important tools in medicine, vital for developing the polio vaccine, cloning, gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, and more. The HeLa cells were the first immortal cell line derived from a human cell. They are responsible for advances in invitro fertilization and the proliferation of the polio vaccine.

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