美国国家公共电台 NPR Henrietta Lacks' Lasting Impact Detailed In New Portrait

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

When Henrietta Lacks was dying of cancer in 1951, her cells were harvested without her knowledge. They became crucial to scientific research, and her story eventually became a best-selling book. Lacks has become one of the most powerful symbols for informed consent in the history of science. This morning the National Portrait Gallery here in Washington, D.C., honored Henrietta Lacks by installing a painting of her. It's located just inside one of the main entrances. NPR's Neda Ulaby was there along with three of Lacks' grandchildren.

KIMBERLY LACKS: This is amazing. As soon as you walk through the doors...

JERI LACKS WHYTE: Yes, right there.

LACKS: ...There she is (laughter).

NEDA ULABY, BYLINE 1: Kimberly Lacks and Jeri Lacks Whyte are seeing this portrait for the first time. They never knew their grandmother. She died before they were born.

LACKS: A beautiful woman.

WHYTE: Just like they said she was in life - happy, outgoing, just giving. And she's still giving.

ULABY: Tons of Lacks' cells have been grown in labs over the past 67 years. They helped develop the AIDS cocktail 2, the polio vaccine 3 and treatments for hemophilia, herpes, influenza 4 and leukemia. Henrietta Lacks and her family never benefited from the thousands of patents and billions of dollars her cells helped generate.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE IMMORTAL 5 LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS")

UNIDENTIFIED ACTRESS: (As character) Everyone's saying Henrietta Lacks donated them cells. She didn't donate nothing. They took them and didn't ask.

ULABY: That's from an HBO movie based on the book "The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot. HBO commissioned the painting. Now it's co-owned by the National Portrait Gallery and the National Museum of African-American History and Culture. Bill Pretzer is a senior curator there. He says the story of Lacks is also one of racial history, bioethics and medical history.

BILL PRETZER: Doctors had been trying for half a century to grow cells in laboratory circumstances that would reproduce.

ULABY: Lacks' cells did. What's become known as her immortal line is represented, says Pretzer, by a pattern in her cheerful red dress that resembles cell structures when you look at it closely. And...

PRETZER: There are a couple of buttons that are missing on Henrietta Lacks' dress. And those were explicitly 6 left off by the artist as a symbol of the cells that had been removed from her body.

ULABY: The artist, Kadir Nelson, painted Lacks standing 7 in front of a wall covered with blue and purple hexagons, says National Portrait Gallery curator Dorothy Moss 8.

DOROTHY MOSS: A pattern that almost looks like wallpaper, but it's actually representative of her cells.

ULABY: In the painting, Henrietta Lacks clasps a Bible in front of the part of her body from which her cells were removed. Her face is haloed like a saint's by the brim of a light sun hat. The doctor who cut her open wrote later that the tumors made it look as though pearls studded the inside of her body. Lacks wears pearls in the painting. Her granddaughter Kimberly has her own interpretation 9.

LACKS: Pearls seem like it's classy, just a test of time. And that's that she was. She was classy. And I just think it's amazing, a great representation of our grandmother, our shero (ph).

(LAUGHTER)

ULABY: Time now for selfies. But it's hard given family emotions.

LACKS: My hand's shaking (laughter).

ULABY: This portrait should be a reminder 10, says curator Bill Pretzer...

PRETZER: That history can be remade, can be re-remembered.

ULABY: Henrietta Lacks is being re-remembered in all kinds of ways. She received a posthumous 11 doctorate 12 in public service from a college in Maryland. A high school for students interested in medicine now bears her name. So does a minor 13 planet whirling in the asteroid 14 belt between Mars and Jupiter. Neda Ulaby, NPR News.