The female physician who popularised the Pap smear

[GeoWilliam750]

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20201012-helen-dickens-the-gynaecologist-who-fought-for-black-women

"The daughter of a former slave, Helen Octavia Dickens empowered teen mothers and pioneered the popularity of the Pap smear, helping to save hundreds of lives.
I
In 1951, a 31-year-old mother-of-five walked into Maryland’s Johns Hopkins Hospital for what she called “a knot on my womb”. The knot, it turned out, was a virulent cancer that had started in her cervix. She would soon die in agony of the disease, then the number one killer of American women.

The woman was Henrietta Lacks, who would one day become known for her unintended contribution to medical science. After her death, scientists would take her cancer cells and reproduce them into perpetuity without her family’s knowledge, using them to investigate diseases from Aids to polio.

If Lacks had been given a Pap smear, she may have survived. Developed a decade earlier, the simple screening tool – named after its creator, Greek gynaecologist George “Pap” Papanicolaou – was the newest and most promising technology in early cancer detection. It rose to become the gold standard in cancer screening, and would be instrumental in slashing cervical cancer rates by 70% over the next half century."

[elleng]

1. The Legacy of Henrietta Lacks

'In 1951, a young mother of five named Henrietta Lacks visited The Johns Hopkins Hospital complaining of vaginal bleeding. Upon examination, renowned gynecologist Dr. Howard Jones discovered a large, malignant tumor on her cervix. At the time, The Johns Hopkins Hospital was one of only a few hospitals to treat poor African-Americans.

As medical records show, Mrs. Lacks began undergoing radium treatments for her cervical cancer. This was the best medical treatment available at the time for this terrible disease. A sample of her cancer cells retrieved during a biopsy were sent to Dr. George Gey's nearby tissue lab. For years, Dr. Gey, a prominent cancer and virus researcher, had been collecting cells from all patients who came to The Johns Hopkins Hospital with cervical cancer, but each sample quickly died in Dr. Gey’s lab. What he would soon discover was that Mrs. Lacks’ cells were unlike any of the others he had ever seen: where other cells would die, Mrs. Lacks' cells doubled every 20 to 24 hours.

Today, these incredible cells— nicknamed "HeLa" cells, from the first two letters of her first and last names — are used to study the effects of toxins, drugs, hormones and viruses on the growth of cancer cells without experimenting on humans. They have been used to test the effects of radiation and poisons, to study the human genome, to learn more about how viruses work, and played a crucial role in the development of the polio vaccine.

Although Mrs. Lacks ultimately passed away on October 4, 1951, at the age of 31, her cells continue to impact the world.'

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/henriettalacks/

[More_Cowbell]

2. That book is amazing

Even for people who don't know a lot about science.

eta: I didn't realize that the post didn't mention the book: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. A really astonishing book about the woman who, after death, was the source of HeLa cells used to cure many diseases.