Question 1

Who was Henrietta Lacks?

Accepted Answer

A Black American woman whose cancer cells, **taken without her knowledge or consent in 1951**, became the first human cell line to survive and multiply indefinitely in culture — and which have since underpinned an enormous proportion of modern biomedical research.

**What happened.** Henrietta Lacks, a tobacco farmer and mother of five, was treated for cervical cancer at Johns Hopkins Hospital, one of the few hospitals then treating Black patients. During treatment, a sample of her tumour was taken and passed to a researcher without her being told or asked. **This was not unlawful at the time**, and was common practice — which is part of the point.

She died later that year, aged 31, and was buried in an unmarked grave.

**Why the cells mattered so much.** Human cells had consistently died in culture. Hers — designated **HeLa** — did not. They divided indefinitely, robustly and rapidly, giving researchers for the first time a reliable, reproducible supply of living human cells.

**What they were used for:** developing and testing the **polio vaccine**; work on cancer, HIV and the human papillomavirus; the effects of radiation; gene mapping; in vitro fertilisation techniques; and research conducted in space. HeLa cells have featured in many tens of thousands of scientific papers and are still in daily use.

**What happened to the family.** They were not told for more than twenty years. When they learned, they discovered that cells derived from their mother were being bought and sold worldwide while the family could not afford healthcare. In the 1970s researchers approached them for blood samples **without explaining why**. Her genome was later published without consent, then withdrawn.

**What changed because of it.** The case became central to debates on **informed consent, tissue ownership and racial inequity in medicine**. An agreement was eventually reached giving family members a role in approving access to the HeLa genome, and settlements with companies profiting from the cells have followed.

**Her name is now attached** to institutes, buildings and awards.

Question 2

Could Anastasia have survived?

Accepted Answer

No — and this is one of the few historical mysteries that has been definitively closed, by DNA evidence, after decades in which it was genuinely open. The original uncertainty. The Romanov family

Question 3

Who was Tu Youyou?

Accepted Answer

The Chinese scientist who discovered artemisinin, the compound that became the basis of the most effective malaria treatment available — work done during the Cultural Revolution, in poor conditions,

Question 4

Who was Alice Ball?

Accepted Answer

A chemist who developed the first effective treatment for leprosy — at 23, in about a year — and who died before publishing it, after which her work was taken and published by the man who had been

Question 5

Was Rosalind Franklin's work stolen?

Accepted Answer

The truth is more complicated than either the heroic or the dismissive version, and the honest answer is that her data was used without her knowledge or consent — which is a serious matter regardless

Question 6

Who was Mary Seacole?

Accepted Answer

A British-Jamaican businesswoman and healer who travelled independently to the Crimean War and provided care and provisions to British soldiers, funding the enterprise herself. Background. Born Mary

Question 7

Was Cleopatra's death by asp really what happened?

Accepted Answer

Probably not. The snake story is ancient, dramatic and poorly supported — most modern historians consider poison the more likely method, and some consider murder a genuine possibility. Where the

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