HENRIETTA LACKS, A SEED OF IMMORTALITY!
The world owes her so much, in that for about six decades now, her cells have continued to grow and provide a foundation for series of medical and scientific advancements.
Talking of the cells which have revolutionized medical research since the 1950s. The HeLa cell line has been used extensively in laboratories across the globe. It is the subject of almost 100,000 studies, yielding insights into cell biology, cancer, vaccines and invitro (in test tube)fertilization, and for reasons that would ever remain a mystery, her cells have refused to die.
WHO THEN IS HENRIETTA LACKS ?
She was a poor African American tobacco farmer and mother.
Henrietta Lacks is the source of the cells that form the HeLa cell-line, cells which under proper conditions would indefinitely reproduce.
SHE was born Loretta Pleasant in the year 1920, August 1, in Roanoke, Virginia.
On April 10, 1941, she got married to David "Day" Lacks.
As a result of intense abdominal pain and bleeding, she visited John Hopkins Hospital Where she was diagnosed with cervical cancer on 29 January, 1951.
During her radiation treatments, doctors removed Two cervical samples without her knowing and sent them to the laboratory of Dr. George Grey.
The cells were noticed as very unusual. While most cells survived a few days, Lacks' cells just lived on.
George Grey would create a cell-line with Lacks' cells, which today is widely known as HeLa ( coined from Henrietta Lacks) cell-line, the first immortalized cell-line.
Though Lacks would die a horrible death a short while later, at age 31, as a result of the rapid metastasis of the cells, those same cells which brought on death, would live on, giving birth to life and changing the face of science and medicine.
A Magnified Image Of HeLa Cell-line
HeLa cells dividing
Due to demand from scientists all over the globe, the cells were cloned in 1955. Since then the cells have been used in different researches to study diseases and to test human sensitivity to new products and substances.
There has been ground breaking inventions using the cell-line, amongst which is the development of Polio vaccine in 1952 and a lot more researches using the cell-line are on-going.
A journalist, Rebecca Skloot's New book investigates how a poor black tobacco farmer had a ground-breaking impact on modern science. The same reason why Oprah Winfrey might be shooting a film on Henrietta Lacks.
The cell-line have long been used to :
prove that the Human papillomavirus (HPV) causes cancer.
study the behaviour of Salmonella inside humans.
study the virus infection mechanism of HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus)
prove that cancer cells can grow in outer space.
Though the HeLa case has raised a lot of ethical issues in biomedical research, about the legality of using genetic materials without consent, we appreciate that she has profited humanity immensely and were she to be alive today, wouldn't have done otherwise.
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