As in Ajmer, the Prime Minister invokes "Swastha Nari" and the promise of protection marking India’s launched a national HPV vaccination campaign for 14-year-old girls. The programme seeks to reach 1.15 crore girls each year by providing the vaccination free of charge at government facilities, backed by qualified medical personnel, cold-chain safeguards, and informed parental permission. It represents a significant achievement in public health. It's also a moment when history refuses to remain silent.

Henrietta Lacks, a 31-year-old Black mother of three, died of cervical cancer in 1951 on a segregated ward at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. Doctors had obtained a tumour sample without her knowledge or consent, which was not mandatory at the time. Those cells performed something no human cells had done in a laboratory: they continued to divide. They didn't die. They were the first "immortal" human cell line, known as HeLa cells. They served as the foundation for contemporary biomedical science.

This is not an argument against vaccines. It is an argument for explaining the entire story of how we got here.

Cervical cancer remains India's second most frequent malignancy in women. GLOBOCAN 2022 predicts more than 1.2 lakh new cases and over 80,000 deaths each year. India contributes approximately one-fifth of the global cervical cancer burden. Almost all instances are caused by persistent infection with high-risk human papillomaviruses, particularly types 16 and 18. Vaccines targeting these strains prevent infection before it progresses to malignancy.

The nationwide programme will use Gardasil, a quadrivalent vaccine that protects against HPV 16 and 18, as well as HPV types 6 and 11, which are also associated with certain cancers and genital warts. Since 2006, almost 500 million doses have been provided worldwide. Scientific studies reveal 93-100 per cent efficacy in preventing cervical cancer caused by vaccine-covered kinds. In 2022, the World Health Organization recommended a single-dose plan for girls aged 9 to 20 that is equivalent to two doses. Over 90 countries now employ a single-dose technique.

One significant piece of evidence came from India. In 2009-10, over 15,000 girls aged 10 to 18 from seven states received one, two, or three doses of Gardasil. After nearly a decade of follow-up, the single-dose group demonstrated 95.4% protection against persistent HPV 16/18 infection, which is comparable to two or three doses. Antibody levels remained detectable in more than 96% of single-dose recipients ten years later. This Indian data helped persuade the WHO that a single dose worked. Indian science enabled global policy.

However, cell lines such as HeLa supported the scientific methods needed to confirm that HPV causes cancer, generate viruses in the lab, assess immune responses, and standardise vaccine production. HeLa cells have been used for decades to examine how HPV infects cervical cells, how viral genes activate cancer-causing proteins, and how the immune system recognises infected cells. They were utilised to improve virology and molecular biology techniques that are important to vaccine development. Experts claim a vaccine induces "neutralising antibodies," which means the body develops proteins that prevent the virus from infecting cells. The assays for measuring this reaction were perfected on cell cultures dating back to Lacks.

The legal system is finally catching up to this past. In 2025, Novartis settled a dispute with the Lacks estate. The terms are confidential. The family claimed unjust enrichment, alleging that firms benefited from items made using HeLa cells without ever compensating her descendants. In 2023, Thermo Fisher Scientific will also settle. Litigation against Viatris and Ultragenyx continues, with a federal judge in Maryland permitting allegations to move forward and the Fourth Circuit rejecting intervention in April 2025. Courts are being forced to decide whether decades of scientific progress can have a present-day moral cost.

India said nothing about this context.

There's another irony. Cervavac, an indigenously made quadrivalent HPV vaccination, was marketed in India in 2023 after trials revealed immune responses comparable to Gardasil in young women and men. Cervavac was approved as a two-dose regimen by the National Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation, but lengthier data for a single dose is awaited. Nonetheless, the national plan is commencing using Gardasil, which was obtained through GAVI's global system.

The administration claims that procurement was transparent and quality was ensured. That may be true. However, when a domestic vaccine exists, Indian data influences worldwide guidance, and public funds are used to acquire millions of doses, doubts are not an impediment. They represent accountability. Was supply certainty the deciding factor? Was there a price? Was there single-dose readiness? In a country that spends less than 3% of its GDP on public health, procurement decisions are political.

The question of inclusion also arises. The programme exclusively targets girls. However, the same Indian researchers, whose results supported the case for single-dose immunisation, have advocated for gender-neutral vaccination. Vaccinating males boosts herd immunity – a simple notion that states that when enough people are immune, the virus struggles to spread. It also protects boys from anal and oropharyngeal malignancies caused by HPV. More than 160 nations have adopted HPV vaccination, and many now vaccinate both sexes. When prevention is portrayed as protecting daughters,""boys are discreetly removed from the picture.

None of this affects the vaccine's lifesaving potential. On the contrary, modelling indicates that a single-dose programme might prevent over one million cervical cancer cases in the lives of girls aged 10 and under. Cold-chain systems, medical officer training, and monitoring for uncommon adverse effects are all strengths of India's vaccination system.

However, public health is not exempt from historical context. The knowledge that allows us to avoid cervical cancer today is based, in part, on cells obtained without consent from a dying woman in 1951. Her family received none of the money from patents based on those cells. Pharmaceutical firms are increasingly discreetly resolving claims, even while litigation in American courts continues.

If India can cite global evidence, achieve international procurement relationships, and adhere to WHO regulation, it can also acknowledge the moral origins of the science it uses. Vaccination is correct. Preventing 80,000 fatalities each year is critical. However, a nation that speaks of girls and growth must also be able to say the name of the woman whose cells made this protection possible.

Her name is Henrietta Lacks.