The name of Henrietta Lacks, a poor African-American woman from Virginia, has been inscribed in medical books because for decades now her “immortal” cells have been used for exceptionally important medical purposes. When a book was published, her name became globally known. Who was Henrietta Lacks?
This African-American from a poor Virginia family, who had grown up on tobacco plantations, was diagnosed with cervical cancer in the early 1951, when she was thirty years old. She was treated at John Hopkins Hospital, as this was the closest hospital admitting African-American patients. When Dr Howard Jones examined her, he took tissue samples from Henrietta’s cervix and sent them to a laboratory, where it was soon established that they contained cancer cells and that she had an epidermoid carcinoma.
She was referred to X-ray treatment, during which two more samples were taken from her cervix and given to George Otto Gey, an American scientist of German descent. A short time before, Gey had set up a tissue culture laboratory and designed several devices for facilitating laboratory cell propagation, and thus he began growing the cancer cells taken from Henrietta Lacks’ cervix.
Unlike his previous attempts at growing cells, which he was able to keep alive for only a few days, Gey discovered that some of Henrietta’s cells constantly grew and did not die after only several divisions. Thus, he was able to propagate a cell line. In October 1951, Henrietta Lacks died of cancer, which had metastasized throughout her body, but the cells from the tissue sample retrieved from her are still propagating, living and dying in laboratories. This cell line has become immortal – it has been kept alive for decades and is known as the HeLa cell line.
More important than the fascinating fact about culturing immortal cells is the fact that they are actually grown to be used in numerous medical experiments. For example, in the first several years they were utilized in the development of a vaccine for polio. Also, the HeLa cells were the first human cells to be successfully cloned in 1955. At that time they were cultivated on a massive scale as they were in great demand among researchers. They have been used for research into AIDS, the effects of certain medications and chemical substances, cancer and many other diseases.
Owing to them, the scientific community has produced around 11,000 patents and so far more than twenty metric tons of HeLa cells have been cultivated. Even though the exact burial location of Henrietta Lacks is unknown, the epitaph on a later erected headstone states that her immortal cells will continue to help mankind forever.
George Otto Gey also died of cancer. According to information found in Rebecca Skloot’s book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, when surgeons wanted to operate on him, he asked them to take a piece of his cancer affected liver tissue so that he might cultivate it and preserve it for research as a new cell line. The surgeons, however, paid no heed to his request. During the operation, they concluded that the cancer had metastasized to such an extent that it was inoperable.