Happy Women’s History Month! Throughout the month we’ll be highlighting the stories of the women in STEAM that have made history and are still leaving legacies that have truly impacted the world! Today we’re starting with Henrietta Lacks! In January 1951, a few months after giving birth to her fifth child, Henrietta Lacks, a 30-year-old Black woman, became concerned about a lump on her cervixTrusted Source. This, and unexplained vaginal bleeding, led her to seek medical attention. She went to Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, the only hospital in the area that would provide treatment to Black people at that time. Doctors there diagnosed a particularly aggressive form of cervical cancer. The standard treatment at the time was radium therapy. During her first treatment, under sedation, the surgeon took a tissue sample from her tumor. He passed this on to the head of tissue culture research at Johns Hopkins. The cells that doctors took from Henrietta’s tumor were then placed in a cul...