Mr Lawrence Lacks, Alfred, Victoria, dear colleagues and friends,
First, it’s my great honour to welcome you to WHO, to honour your mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother, Henrietta Lacks.
The story of Henrietta Lacks and her family has been told in different ways by different people.
Many sought to hide or alter things about her: her race; her name; her identity.
That’s why today I have invited you, her family, to WHO, so you can share your family’s story, in your own words.
What happened to Henrietta was wrong, for at least three reasons.
First, she lived in a time when racial discrimination was legal in her society.
Racial discrimination may no longer be legal most countries, but it is still widespread in many countries.
Second, Henrietta Lacks was exploited. She is one of many women of colour whose bodies have been misused by science.
She placed her trust in the health system so she could receive treatment. But the system took something from her without her knowledge or consent.
And third, the medical technologies that were developed from this injustice have been used to perpetuate further injustice, because they have not been shared equitably around the world.
Henrietta’s cells were foundational in the development of HPV vaccines that can eliminate the same cancer that took her life.
But in countries with the highest burden of cervical cancer, those vaccines are not available in sufficient doses.
Likewise, although her cells have been used in COVID-19 research, the tools to stop the disease are not being shared enough with low-and-middle-income countries.
Nor are many other life-saving innovations developed with Henrietta’s miraculous HeLa cells.
Many people have benefited from those cells – fortunes have been made, science has advanced, Nobel Prizes have been won and most importantly, many lives have been saved.
No doubt Henrietta would have been pleased that her suffering has saved others.
But the end does not justify the means. All it would have taken was for someone to do her the honour of asking.
In honouring Henrietta Lacks today, WHO acknowledges the importance of reckoning with past injustices, and advancing racial equity in health and science.
Acknowledging the wrongs of the past is essential for building trust for the future.
We also recognize the extraordinary potential that her legacy continues to offer. There are many more lives we can save by working for racial justice and equity.
We stand in solidarity with marginalized patients and communities all over the world who are not consulted, engaged or empowered in their own care.
We affirm that in medicine and in science, black lives matter.
Henrietta Lacks’s life mattered, and still matters.
Today is also an opportunity to recognize those women of colour who have made incredible – but often unseen – contributions to medical science.
It is therefore my great honour to present the Director-General’s Award posthumously to Henrietta Lacks. I invite her son, Mr Lawrence Lacks, and her great granddaughter, Victoria Baptiste, to receive it on her behalf.