S. 1893 would authorize Congress to award a posthumous Congressional Gold Medal to Henrietta Lacks, an African American woman whose cancer cells were taken without her consent in 1951 and became the foundation for decades of medical breakthroughs. Her cells, known as HeLa cells, have been used in research leading to vaccines, cancer drugs, and treatments for HIV/AIDS, Parkinson's disease, and other conditions, and have contributed to over 110,000 scientific publications and several Nobel Prize-winning discoveries. The bill recognizes Lacks' profound impact on medical science and her role in establishing modern informed consent and bioethics protections, even though her family did not benefit from the commercial use of her cells for more than twenty years. The Secretary of the Treasury would design and strike the gold medal, which would then be housed at the Smithsonian Institution for display and research. The bill authorizes funding through the United States Mint Public Enterprise Fund, with costs covered by sales of duplicate bronze medals.
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