Henrietta Lacks and her medical revolution

Henrietta Lacks was a born on August 1st 1920.  She grew up on the same land her ancestors had as slaves, she was poor and lived a hard life.  She had four children, and a husband.  She was a normal individual of the time who would be buried in an unmarked grave when she passed, but she would start a medical revolution beyond anyone's expectations.

On February 1, 1951 Lacks visited Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore for painful "knot" and vaginal discharge.  That day she was diagnosed with cervical cancer, of the type the doctors had never seen before.  She was given the normal treatment of radiation and X-rays but, as the autopsy after death would show, the cancer had metastasized throughout her body.  On October 4, 1951 at the age of thirty-one she died.  But, that is not the end of her story, instead it is the beginning.

On her first visit, without her knowledge, her cancerous cells were collected for research purposes as was standard practice at the time.  Those cells did something that no other cells had ever done before outside the body.  They grew and thrived in a culture.  These new cells were dubbed HeLa cells and a factory was setup at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama to produce more.  The factory started producing 3 trillion HeLa cells a week and sending them to researchers throughout the world.  The HeLa cells have been used for thousands of applications from the development of the polio vaccine to testing toxicity of glues.

No one really knows why the cells survived, or why they still are going strong.  Lacks had the human papillomavirus and syphilis which weakened her immune system.  There are theories that this may have allowed these "immortal" cells to develop.

In the 1970s her family learned that the cells were from their mother/wife when doctors contacted the family stating they wanted to test the children for cancer.  The family is poor and unable to afford the treatments that were generated with the cells.  To this day the family has never received any of the billions of dollars generated from the cells.  You can purchase a vial of HeLa cells today for $250.  As of today there have been over 50 million metric tons of HeLa cells produced.  Henrietta Lacks has been considered the most important person in medical history as a result of the cells.

-Professor Walter

Comments

[Olivia]

Talk about screwed over. Poor family. And human papillomavirus is one of the biggest women killers in Australia. Great.

[The Wife]

Shameful that her family has received nothing. I'm surprised that no lawyer has contacted them for a lawsuit. I'm assuming that she must have signed a waiver at the time of treatment.

[Professor Walter]

The fact is that there is no need to give consent for this kind of activity even today.

[The Wife]

That doesn't make sense -- when you go into a hospital, you have to sign something indicating that you allow testing and scientific study. Remember what we did with The Girl's placenta? They had to ask permission. Once you give the permission it's a done deal, but perhaps it was different then? I'm confused.