Stolen Human Tissue Yields Millions on Open Market
In January 1951, Mrs. Lacks was found to have cervical cancer. She agreed to treatment with radium at Johns Hopkins. There was no stopping her cancer. Her doctor had never seen anything like it. Within months, her body was full of tumors. She died in excruciating pain that October. She was 31 and the devoted mother to her five children, the youngest just a year old. Without their mother the children suffered terribly.
Neither Mrs. Lacks nor any of her relatives knew that doctors had given a sample of her tumor to Dr. George Gey, a Hopkins researcher who was trying to find cells that would live indefinitely in culture so researchers could experiment on them. Before she came along, his efforts had failed. Her cells changed everything: they multiplied like crazy and never died.
A cell line called HeLa (for Henrietta Lacks) was born. Those immortal cells soon became the workhorse of laboratories everywhere. HeLa cells were used to develop the first polio vaccine, they were launched into space for experiments in zero gravity and they helped produce drugs for numerous diseases, including Parkinson’s, leukemia and the flu. By now, literally tons of them have been produced.
Dr. Gey did not make money from the cells, but they were commercialized. Now they are bought and sold every day the world over, and they have generated millions in profits.
A Lasting Gift to Medicine That Wasn’t Really a Gift (NY Times)
“The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” at Amazon.com
