Radiolab - Radiolab Extra: Henrietta Lacks

With all the recent talk about HBO's upcoming film, we decided it would be good time to re-run our story of one woman's medically miraculous cancer cells, and how Henrietta Lacks changed modern science and, eventually, her family's understanding of itself. Support Radiolab by becoming a member today at Radiolab.org/donate.

Duration: 36m
Broadcast on: 18 Apr 2017
Audio Format: other

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All right, so tonight is the premiere of a movie we're really excited about. It's called The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. It stars an up-and-coming actress. Maybe you've heard her Oprah Winfrey. And it is based on the book of a very, very dear friend, Rebecca Skloot, best-selling book. You'll be able to watch the movie in a couple days on HBO. But in the meantime, we're just so proud of Rebecca thrilled that this movie is getting out to a wider audience because everyone should know the story. So in honor of that, we're going to play for you a documentary we produced with Rebecca. We worked on it for a few years with her while she was sort of formulating the book. And it includes tape you won't hear anywhere else. We can move me closer. Hello, hello, hello. And the story is about a tumor that expands and never stops. Begins in 1950, a black woman in Baltimore is in her bathroom. And she discovers pretty much all on her own that she has cancer. It's a little bit of a mystery how she initially knew this, but she knew it was there. A knot, she called it. She had told her cousins for a while that she thought there was something wrong with her with her womb. And she climbed into her bathtub and she slid her fingers up inside of herself and found this lump. Chapter one. First, she went into her local doctor. My chance. I happened to be an attending at that time. The guy she eventually ended up seeing, at Johns Hopkins University, was this fellow, Dr. Howard Jones. I'm 98. Next month, I'll be 99. Wow. So when she came in to see you, can you tell me anything about what she was like? Well, she was a... You don't remember anything. No, I really don't. But you remember her tumor, right? Oh, absolutely. I never saw anything like it before or after.

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