The Woman Whose Cells Changed the World — The Untold Story of Henrietta Lacks She died in 1951, but her cells never did. Henrietta Lacks — a 31-year-old Black woman from Baltimore — had her cancer cells taken without her consent at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Those cells, known as HeLa cells, became the foundation of modern medicine. They were used to create the polio vaccine, study cancer, AIDS, gene mapping, cloning, and even IVF. Her cells saved millions of lives — yet her own family was left in