Post by Champs Elysees on Mar 31, 2008 7:04:46 GMT -5
Millions of lives have been saved by the research conducted using these cells that were taken from a malignant tumor from Henrietta Lacks who succumed to cancer shortly after her diagnosis. This story is amazing.
Henrietta Lacks (1920-1951) was the 31-year-old leading contributor to the sciences of aging and cancer, but she never knew it.
Born on Aug. 18, 1920, in Roanoke, Va., Lacks was a wife and mother of five who, on Feb. 1, 1951, went to Johns Hopkins Hospital because of a vaginal discharge; that day she was diagnosed with cervical cancer. Treated in the hospital’s segregated ward for blacks, Lacks died on October 4, 1951, but she will live forever…
Before Lacks’ treatment began, a sample of her malignant tumor was sent to George Gey, head of tissue culture research at Hopkins. He and his wife, Margaret, had been searching for a tool for the study of cancer: a line of human cells that would live indefinitely outside the body. If they succeeded, they could observe and test human cells in ways they could never do in humans. Eventually, they could discover the cure for cancer; they were sure of it. The day George Gey got his hands on Henrietta Lacks’ cells, everything changed: for the Geys, for medicine and for the Lackses.
Henrietta Lacks’s cells multiplied like nothing anyone had seen. They latched to the sides of test tubes, consumed the medium around them, and within days, the thin film of cells grew thicker and thicker. But Henrietta’s tumor cells took over her body as quickly as they’d taken over test tubes. Within months, tumors appeared on almost every organ, and Henrietta moaned from her bed for the Lord to help her. The day she died, Oct. 4, 1951, George Gey appeared on national television with a vial of Henrietta’s cells. He called them HeLa cells, held them up to the camera, and said, “It is possible that, from a fundamental study such as this, we will be able to learn a way by which cancer can be completely wiped out.” Gey introduced the nation to his hopes for curing cancer while Henrietta’s body lay in the Hopkins morgue, and her family knew nothing of any cells.
In those days, there was no need to inform a patient or their relatives about such matters because discarded material or material obtained during surgery, diagnosis or therapy was then, as is today, the property of the physician or medical institution.
HeLa cells were used in Jonas Salk’s development of the polio vaccine. According to Roland Pattillo, a former fellow of Gey’s and director of gynecologic oncology at Morehouse School of Medicine:
“It was Henrietta Lacks’ cells that embraced the polio virus. She made it possible to grow the virus so the vaccine could be developed.”
Packaged in small tubes tucked in plastic foam containers, with careful instructions for feeding and handling, shipments of Henrietta’s cells went out to Gey’s colleagues around the world. Researchers welcomed the gifts, allowing HeLa to grow. They used the cells to search for a leukemia cure and the cause of cancer, to study viral growth, protein synthesis, genetic control mechanisms, and the unknown effects of drugs and radiation. And though Henrietta never traveled farther than from Virginia to Baltimore, her cells sat in nuclear test sites from America to Japan and multiplied in a space shuttle far above the Earth. Still, David Lacks and his children hadn’t a clue.
“The [only thing] I heard about it was, she had that cancer. They called me, said come up there because she died. They asked me to let them take samples, and I decided not to let them do it.”
It wasn’t until 1975, when his daughter-in-law went to a friend’s house for dinner, that Lacks heard about the enormous impact his wife’s cells had made. Barbara Lacks, the wife of Henrietta and David’s eldest son, Lawrence, met a friend’s brother-in-law who was a scientist who spent his days in a Washington laboratory.
“You know, he said, “your name sounds so familiar. I think I know what it is…I’ve been working with some cells in my lab; they’re from a woman called Henrietta Lacks. Are you related?”
“That’s my mother-in-law,” Barbara whispered, shaking her head. “She’s been dead almost 25 years, what do you mean you’re working with her cells?”
Jackson explained. The cells, he told her, had been alive since Henrietta’s death and were all around the world. Actually, by that time, they were standard reference cells–few molecular scientists hadn’t worked with them. Henrietta’s cells were, and still are, some of the strongest cells known to science–they reproduce an entire generation every 24 hours. “If allowed to grow uninhibited,” Howard Jones, who discovered Henrietta’s tumor, and his Hopkins colleagues said in 1971, “[HeLa cells] would have taken over the world by this time.” This strength provided a research workhorse to irradiate, poison, and manipulate without inflicting harm.
To this day, members of the Lacks family feel they’ve been passed over in the story of the HeLa cells. They know their mother’s cells started a medical revolution and are now bought and sold around the world. They’re pretty sure that someone, somewhere, has profited from their mother’s death. They know that someone wasn’t related to Henrietta. And their experience is not well-known. In cases like these, a good way to begin addressing this problem is through the telling of a story from which everyone can learn.
Mrs. Henrietta Lacks was buried without a tombstone in a family cemetery in Lackstown, in the city of Clover in Halifax County, Va., where she was raised. Lackstown is the name of the land that has been held by the Lacks’ family since they received it from the family whom they were slaves and also descendants of.
Born on Aug. 18, 1920, in Roanoke, Va., Lacks was a wife and mother of five who, on Feb. 1, 1951, went to Johns Hopkins Hospital because of a vaginal discharge; that day she was diagnosed with cervical cancer. Treated in the hospital’s segregated ward for blacks, Lacks died on October 4, 1951, but she will live forever…
Before Lacks’ treatment began, a sample of her malignant tumor was sent to George Gey, head of tissue culture research at Hopkins. He and his wife, Margaret, had been searching for a tool for the study of cancer: a line of human cells that would live indefinitely outside the body. If they succeeded, they could observe and test human cells in ways they could never do in humans. Eventually, they could discover the cure for cancer; they were sure of it. The day George Gey got his hands on Henrietta Lacks’ cells, everything changed: for the Geys, for medicine and for the Lackses.
Henrietta Lacks’s cells multiplied like nothing anyone had seen. They latched to the sides of test tubes, consumed the medium around them, and within days, the thin film of cells grew thicker and thicker. But Henrietta’s tumor cells took over her body as quickly as they’d taken over test tubes. Within months, tumors appeared on almost every organ, and Henrietta moaned from her bed for the Lord to help her. The day she died, Oct. 4, 1951, George Gey appeared on national television with a vial of Henrietta’s cells. He called them HeLa cells, held them up to the camera, and said, “It is possible that, from a fundamental study such as this, we will be able to learn a way by which cancer can be completely wiped out.” Gey introduced the nation to his hopes for curing cancer while Henrietta’s body lay in the Hopkins morgue, and her family knew nothing of any cells.
In those days, there was no need to inform a patient or their relatives about such matters because discarded material or material obtained during surgery, diagnosis or therapy was then, as is today, the property of the physician or medical institution.
HeLa cells were used in Jonas Salk’s development of the polio vaccine. According to Roland Pattillo, a former fellow of Gey’s and director of gynecologic oncology at Morehouse School of Medicine:
“It was Henrietta Lacks’ cells that embraced the polio virus. She made it possible to grow the virus so the vaccine could be developed.”
Packaged in small tubes tucked in plastic foam containers, with careful instructions for feeding and handling, shipments of Henrietta’s cells went out to Gey’s colleagues around the world. Researchers welcomed the gifts, allowing HeLa to grow. They used the cells to search for a leukemia cure and the cause of cancer, to study viral growth, protein synthesis, genetic control mechanisms, and the unknown effects of drugs and radiation. And though Henrietta never traveled farther than from Virginia to Baltimore, her cells sat in nuclear test sites from America to Japan and multiplied in a space shuttle far above the Earth. Still, David Lacks and his children hadn’t a clue.
“The [only thing] I heard about it was, she had that cancer. They called me, said come up there because she died. They asked me to let them take samples, and I decided not to let them do it.”
It wasn’t until 1975, when his daughter-in-law went to a friend’s house for dinner, that Lacks heard about the enormous impact his wife’s cells had made. Barbara Lacks, the wife of Henrietta and David’s eldest son, Lawrence, met a friend’s brother-in-law who was a scientist who spent his days in a Washington laboratory.
“You know, he said, “your name sounds so familiar. I think I know what it is…I’ve been working with some cells in my lab; they’re from a woman called Henrietta Lacks. Are you related?”
“That’s my mother-in-law,” Barbara whispered, shaking her head. “She’s been dead almost 25 years, what do you mean you’re working with her cells?”
Jackson explained. The cells, he told her, had been alive since Henrietta’s death and were all around the world. Actually, by that time, they were standard reference cells–few molecular scientists hadn’t worked with them. Henrietta’s cells were, and still are, some of the strongest cells known to science–they reproduce an entire generation every 24 hours. “If allowed to grow uninhibited,” Howard Jones, who discovered Henrietta’s tumor, and his Hopkins colleagues said in 1971, “[HeLa cells] would have taken over the world by this time.” This strength provided a research workhorse to irradiate, poison, and manipulate without inflicting harm.
To this day, members of the Lacks family feel they’ve been passed over in the story of the HeLa cells. They know their mother’s cells started a medical revolution and are now bought and sold around the world. They’re pretty sure that someone, somewhere, has profited from their mother’s death. They know that someone wasn’t related to Henrietta. And their experience is not well-known. In cases like these, a good way to begin addressing this problem is through the telling of a story from which everyone can learn.
Mrs. Henrietta Lacks was buried without a tombstone in a family cemetery in Lackstown, in the city of Clover in Halifax County, Va., where she was raised. Lackstown is the name of the land that has been held by the Lacks’ family since they received it from the family whom they were slaves and also descendants of.
