The stolen cells of Henrietta Lacks and their ongoing contribution to science

 In the past century, Henrietta Lacks has, arguably, done more to advance medicine than any other person. She played a material role in the development of polio vaccines, cancer treatments, HPV vaccines, and mapping the human genome. This young Black woman died from cervical cancer in 1951. It was cells taken during her cancer treatment that became one of the most powerful research tools ever, but she did not know about or give permission for their retrieval. What can we learn from such wrongs committed in the name of science?

In January 1951, a few months after giving birth to her fifth child, Henrietta Lacks, a 30-year-old Black woman, became concerned about a lump on her cervixTrusted Source. This, and unexplained vaginal bleeding, led her to seek medical attention.

She went to Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, the only hospital in the area that would provide treatment to Black people at that time.

Doctors there diagnosed a particularly aggressive form of cervical cancer. She did not tell her husband or family, informing them only that she had to go to the doctor for medicine.

The standard treatment at the time was radium therapy. During her first treatment, under sedation, the surgeon took a tissue sample from her tumor. He passed this on to the head of tissue culture research at Johns Hopkins, Dr. George Otto GeyTrusted Source.

Taking cell samples for research was routine practice at the time, and doctors rarely asked patients for consent. As a result, most patients were, like Henrietta, completely unaware of what would happen to their cells.

An uneasy immortality

The cells that doctors took from Henrietta’s tumor were then placed in a culture medium, labeled “HeLa” to identify them. The researchers expected that, like most cell samples, they would multiply a few times, then die.

After her first treatment, doctors discharged Henrietta from the hospital, and she went back to work in the tobacco fields, oblivious to the fact that doctors had taken her cells for research purposes.

In the lab, the HeLa cells not only remained alive, but multiplied at an astonishing rate.

Dr. Gey informed colleagues that his lab had grown the first immortal cell line, and shared samples of HeLa cells with them.

Source: MedicalNewsToday