The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

This chapter recalls events from 1954-1966. As scientists continue to grow HeLa for research, Chester Southam, a virologist and cancer researcher, begins to wonder if they are in danger of becoming infected with Henrietta’s cancer. In order to assess the risks, he takes about a dozen cancer patients, telling them he is testing their immune systems, and injects them with Henrietta’s cancerous cells. He then tries the same test on healthy patients, taking prison inmates as his research subjects. In the next few years, Southam injects Henrietta’s malignant cells into hundreds of unknowing patients for his research.

In 1963, Southam attempts to continue with this research at a Jewish Hospital in Brooklyn, but three Jewish doctors insist that it is wrong to conduct research without the patients’ consent, citing the Nuremberg Code. When the research goes ahead anyway, the three doctors resign and contact a reporter. Southam and Emanuel Mandel, the director of the Jewish hospital, are found guilty in June 1965 of “fraud or deceit and unprofessional conduct in the practice of medicine” (134). Initially, their medical licenses are suspended for one year, but the sentence is later reduced to a one-year probation period.