stained HeLa cells
An immortal cell that lives on long past its human creator’s death. In 1951, a young black woman. A wife, mother and tobacco farmer of only 31 years named Henrietta Lacks died from cervical cancer. During her treatment at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, a biopsy was taken from her cervix and samples of those cells were given to Hopkins cell tissue culture researcher, George Gey, as a matter of standard course. Mrs. Lacks’ cells proved to be radically different than any other that researchers had come across. Her cells continued to replicate in a culture medium well beyond the life expectancy of human cells (either cancerous or non). Even today, sixty years after the death of Henrietta Lacks, her cells continue to split and generate indefinitely in labs all over the world and are akin to weeds, contaminating other cell lines through human hands, lab instruments and even suspected through the air, even while they help virologists understand the paths of disease.
Henrietta Lacks c. 1949
The significance of HeLa (a standard lab name taken from the first two letter of the each patient’s first and last names) cannot be overstated. This cell line has been used to research cancer, AIDS, mapping the genetic code, radiation, space travel effects on human cells, Parkinson’s disease, Influenza, cryogenics, in vitro fertilization, animal cloning, the effects of viral infections on living cells which led to the polio vaccine. Researchers infect HeLa cells with nearly every disease known to man to study its effects of living human cells. The negative effect of the HeLa cells incredible ability to contaminate other cells lines has proved to invalidate much of cancer research and has wasted millions of dollars and research hours.
The for-profit industry that developed around Henrietta’s cells has spawned big business through mass production and distribution of the cell line. Meanwhile the Lacks family continues to live as it has for generations, primarily in poverty and without medical insurance. The HIPAA forms we are now so used to signing at every medical visit, relate directly back to the controversy surrounding a National Institute of Health investigation in the 1960’s relating to injecting cancerous HeLa cells into unwitting patients.
Mrs. Lacks, an obscure woman from rural Virginia, who never understood the progress of her own swift eight month battle with cancer, has become, after death, the most significant donor that medical science has known.
American Culture since 1945 