Universidade Estadual Vale do Acaraú (UVA) 2025 - Inglês

The excerpt describes the life of Henrietta Lacks.

Henrietta Lacks was only 31 when she died of cervical cancer in 1951 in a Baltimore hospital. Not long before her death, doctors removed some of her tumor cells. They later discovered that the cells could thrive in a lab, a feat no human cells had achieved before.

Soon the cells, called HeLa cells, were being shipped from Baltimore around the world. Her cells became the first immortal human cell line ever grown in culture, one of the most important tools in medicine, and they have been the subject of more than 74,000 studies. Research on HeLa was vital to the development of the polio vaccine, as well as drugs for treating herpes, leukemia, influenza, hemophilia, and Parkinson's disease; it helped uncover the secrets of cancer and the effects of the atom bomb, and led to important advances like cloning, in vitro fertilization, and gene mapping.

Though those cells have done wonders for science, Henrietta—whose legacy involves the birth of bioethics and the grim history of experimentation on African-Americans—is all but forgotten. Her son Lawrence said, “Hopkins say they gave them cells away,” Lawrence yelled, “but they made millions! It’s not fair! She’s the most important person in the world and her family living in poverty. If our mother so important to science, why can’t we get health insurance?”

Fonte: https://archive.nytimes.com/learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/09/30/text-to-text-theimmortal-life-of-henrietta-lacks-and-the-sequel/

Henrietta’s son Lawrence says that her family cannot get health insurance. Based on the text, why would this be true?