The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks: Chapter 14 Summary & Analysis

Rebecca explains that considering how many people knew Henrietta’s name, it was impossible that the info wouldn’t be leaked eventually. On November 2, 1953, the Minneapolis Star publishes Henrietta’s identity, but uses the wrong name, calling her Henrietta Lakes.

Roland H. Berg, an NFIP press officer, contacts Gey saying that he wants to write an article about HeLa. Gey replies that he will not allow him to publish Henrietta’sname. Berg fires back that the article will not be interesting without Henrietta’s identity. Rebecca explains that such an article “would have forever connected Henrietta and her family with the cells and medical information…derived from their DNA.” It also would have informed the Lackses about the existence of HeLa.

Gey sends Berg’sletter to TeLinde and other officials at Hopkins asking what he should do. TeLinde replies that the story can still be “interesting” without releasing Henrietta’s name. Gey responds to Berg saying that the article could still work with a false name, but adds that he could be convinced otherwise.

Gey never tells Berg that the name in the Minneapolis Star article is wrong, nor does Berg ever write the story. A few months later, a reporter named Bill Davidson contacts Gey. This time Gey says that he must approve the final article and that the magazine must not include Henrietta’s“personal story or full name.” In May 1954, Davidson writes about cell culturing, saying that it may help cure nearly every known disease, and crediting the cells of a woman he calls “Helen L.” He also asserts that the sample was taken from Henrietta after she died, not before. Rebecca reports that there is no record of how these two pieces of misinformation originated, but that they likely came from someone in Hopkins.

Decades later, a Rolling Stone reporter questions Margaret Gey about the name Helen Lane, and she says that it was simply the result of confusion. One of George Gey’scolleagues, however, asserts that Gey created a pseudonym on purpose in order to keep journalists off the scent of Henrietta’sidentity. If this was the aim, Rebecca says, it worked; from the fifties until the seventies, articles identified the originator of the HeLa cells as Helen Lane or Helen Larson, but never Henrietta Lacks. For this reason, “her family had no idea her cells were alive.”