The recent discussions over the stem cell research bill in Congress got me to thinking about human cell lines. And, you can't think about human cell lines without thinking about HeLa cells. I was under the common misconception that these cells were derived from a cervical carcinoma removed from Helen Lane by George Gey. Wrong. The woman's name was Henrietta Lacks. Because this cell line is immortal and has a different number of chromosomes from normal human cells, Van Valen considers it a new species which he has named Helacyton gartleri (Van Valen, Leigh M. and Virginia C. Maiorana, 1991. HeLa, a new microbial species. Evolutionary Theory 10: 71-74.) These were the cells in which polio virus was grown and used to distinguish different strains of the virus.
Read more about Henrietta, George Gey and HeLa cells in this article in Johns Hopkins magazine. It's a really interesting human interest story.
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, Faden agrees, a good way to begin addressing this problem is through the telling of a story from which everyone can learn. This story starts with Henrietta and the origin of the HeLa cells: They were not from Helen Lane or Helen Larson, as many publications have mistakenly reported, they were from Henrietta Lacks, wife of David, mother of five.
1 comment:
Haven't many experiments involving HeLa cells been called into question since the cells are so radically different from a "typical" human cell line?
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