The Real Wonder Woman

According to Joseph Campbell’s, we are all heroes. I understand that this discussion is either about Rebecca and/or Deborah - and I am in no way shape or form denying their heroism - , but as they crossed the threshold into the unknown world, they resurrected an unwitting hero: Henrietta Lacks. In my opinion, Henrietta is the real wonder woman.

Henrietta Lacks, a descendant of slaves and slaveholders, grew up in Clover, VA farming tobacco on her family land, the same land her relative still farm today. Aspiring a dream of becoming middle class, she left her childhood home and migrated to Baltimore. She was on the mildest of her journey when her life was cut short. However, her cells lived on to realize society’s dreams of health and knowledge.

When alive, Henrietta was known for being a giver and always willing to help others. She was constantly smiling and it was very pleasant to be around her, as reported by many of her friends and family members. She helped on the farm until she moved to Baltimore. Henrietta helped in many more ways than she ever imagined.

Henrietta entered the John Hopkins University clinic seeking help with her bleeding cervical. It was later discovered that Henrietta suffered from a cancerous cervical tumor. Without her consent, doctors removed sample of her tissue which not only survived outside of Henrietta’s body, but they thrived. They continued growing to become the HeLa cells. Without HeLa, scientists could not’t have tested for diseases such as polio, hepatitis, rabies, smallpox, measles, leukemia, HIV, and several other types of cancer without the sacrifice of human lives. Furthermore, HeLa cells sped up the research process and saved researchers billions of dollars.

In a way, Henrietta signed a pact with the devil when she entered the Johns Hopkins clinic. On October 4, 1951, Mrs. Lacks passed away after great sorrow and agony. She died in a racially segregated ward of the Johns Hopkins hospital. But the saga of this unwitting hero does not end with her death or with her contributions to science. Her story has shed light on the continued racist exploitation of the powerless and the poor civilians without the resources to provide for their medical care who often fall victims of the many Nazi like experiments performed by the government.

Authorities seemed to believe, in those days, that they had the right to experiment on the unfortunate poor because they could not pay for medical fees. Because their bills were paid by our tax money, they felt that the millions of powerless and poor citizens had the moral obligation to give something in return to society.

Our unsung hero was betrayed by the nation she trusted. Her body, like those of many others unfortunate patients, was intentionally turned into a test tube for the US government. Henrietta did not die of cancer. She was killed by radium radiation because she was part of a covert cold-war program that was experimenting on radium to discover its affects on the human body. Henrietta’s journey sheds light on the wrongdoing and crimes against humanity committed by projects, generally sponsored by the CIA, involving unsuspected civilians used as human guinea pigs.

Among the victims of those Nazi inspired projects are 7 male infants who were secretly fed radioactive iodine at the University of Tennessee Memphis; 17 newborn infants received intramuscular radioiodine at the University of Iowa; many pregnant women who were secretly injected radioisotope phosphorus-32 before and after delivery at the AC Berkeley; the Rongelap people from the Marshall Islands who were deliberately exposed to radiation after the explosion of 67 atomic and hydrogen bombs.

As part of her therapy for cervical cancer, Dr. Lawrence Wharton, a Johns Hopkins surgeon, stitched a tube containing 4800 mg-h of radium capsules to the wall of Henrietta’s cervix. The radium and x-ray therapy were presumed to slow down mitosis of the cancerous cells, but in fact it killed Mrs. Lacks. The radium was provided as a “courtesy” of the US Atomic Energy Commission. The same sponsor of the many experiments performed on the victims mentioned above.

At the time of Henrietta’s admission, the Johns Hopkins was a major covert CIA covert human guinea pig institution. Aside experiment with radiation, they performed research and experimented with drugs for mind control. The CIA project was part of the agency effort to develop a brainwashing technology and drug to affect large populations.

In light of this, with the help of Deborah and Rebecca, Henrietta is my chosen hero. She is my chosen hero not because of her accomplishments. She is my chosen hero because of her personal misfortune. She is the real wonder woman who has paid the ultimate price. She may have never returned home, but her cells are still alive to this day. They will live for the great benefit of humanity in both scientific and moral ways