Cancer cells were taken from her body without permission. They led to a medical revolution.

BY ADEEL HASSAN

She never traveled farther than Baltimore from her family home in southern Virginia, but her cells have traveled around the earth and far above it, too.

She was buried in an unmarked grave, but the trillions of those cells — generated from a tiny patch taken from her body — are labeled in university labs and biotechnology companies across the world, where they continue to spawn and to play the critical role in a 67-year parade of medical advances.  READ MORE