Roland Pattillo

Roland Pattillo is a cancer researcher and professor at Morehouse School of Medicine who organizes the annual HeLa Cancer Control Symposium in Henrietta's honor. As an African American oncologist who has built part of his career on HeLa cells, he occupies a rare dual position: a working scientist who benefits from the cells while publicly demanding ethical reckoning for the family they came from. Skloot presents him as one of the few figures in the scientific community willing to name Henrietta aloud rather than refer only to "the HeLa cell line."

The HeLa Cancer Control Symposium is an annual event Pattillo holds at Morehouse School of Medicine, dedicated to Henrietta Lacks's memory. It is significant because it represents the most sustained, institutionalized form of recognition Henrietta receives anywhere in the narrative — a formal scientific occasion where her name is spoken with dignity rather than erased. Holding it at Morehouse, a school historically devoted to training Black physicians, underscores Pattillo's argument that HeLa's story is inseparable from the history of race and medicine in America.

Pattillo acts as a guarantor for Skloot, vouching for her intentions and helping broker trust between her and Deborah Lacks. Because the family harbored deep, justified suspicion of researchers and journalists who had historically offered them nothing in return, Pattillo's endorsement — coming from a Black scientist with a public record of advocating for Henrietta — carried credibility that no white institution could provide. His sponsorship is described as one of the critical moments that gave Skloot meaningful access to the story.

Pattillo serves as a reassuring bridge between Deborah and Skloot, persuading Deborah that Skloot's project could finally tell her mother's story with dignity. His annual symposium honoring Henrietta resonates powerfully with Deborah's lifelong desire to see her mother recognized and respected. By combining institutional credibility with genuine advocacy for the Lacks family, Pattillo gives Deborah a reason to believe this retelling would be different from the exploitative encounters the family had experienced before.

Pattillo insists on this framing because he believes the racial and ethical dimensions of Henrietta's case are inseparable from the science itself. His motivation stems from both professional conscience and a commitment to racial justice rooted in his experience as an African American physician navigating institutions that have historically exploited Black patients. By publicly naming Henrietta and emphasizing the segregated context in which her tissue was taken without full consent, he performs what the book frames as a political act of counter-memory against decades of scientific erasure.

Pattillo's simultaneous use of HeLa cells and advocacy for the Lacks family complicates any simple narrative of exploitation. Because he has built part of his career on the very cells he argues were taken unjustly, his critique carries a weight that outside commentators could not match — he speaks from inside the biomedical establishment. Skloot presents this insider status as what makes him an unusually credible and morally serious voice: he cannot be dismissed as ignorant of the science, yet he refuses to treat the cells as ethically neutral.

Pattillo's base at Morehouse — an institution historically dedicated to training Black physicians — stands in deliberate contrast to the Johns Hopkins establishment, represented by figures like Howard Jones, where Henrietta was treated in a segregated ward and her tissue taken without informed consent. By centering the HeLa story at Morehouse rather than at elite research universities, Pattillo implicitly argues that the legacy of the cells belongs to the Black medical tradition those universities long excluded, not only to the institutions that profited from them.