1. In 2010, author Rebecca Skloot published The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, the story of a Black woman who died of cervical cancer in 1951. The book, an immediate bestseller, examines the roles of race, class, gender, and ethics in medical research and considers the implications, both positive and negative, of Henrietta Lacks's remarkable but inadvertent role in some of the most significant medical advances of the twentieth century.
2. In 1951, Lacks, a 30-year-old wife and mother of five, went to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore for treatment of cervical cancer. She was unable to pay for treatment and stayed in a segregated ward. During a procedure to place radium on her tumor, Lacks's doctor cut a sliver from the tumor, placed it in a petri dish, and handed it off to the lab assistant of George Gey, a Johns Hopkins cancer researcher. Sadly, cervical cancer is a particularly pernicious disease, and Henrietta succumbed in October 1951 after a brief but terribly painful struggle, leaving behind her young children.
3. George Gey had been trying unsuccessfully to grow human cells in culture - until Henrietta's cells arrived. Labeled HeLa, Henrietta's cancer cells doubled in culture within 24 hours - and they never stopped. HeLa cells multiplied so rapidly and persistently, Gey eventually began giving them away to other researchers. According to Skloot, Hela became the "workhorse" of research labs everywhere. They were used to test the polio vaccine and in the development of HIV medications and cancer treatments. HeLa cells were central to the development of the HPV vaccine and were some of the first human cells sent into space to determine how zero gravity affected human cellular activity.
4.While Gey never profited from Hela cells, eventually others did. HeLa "factories" soon sprang up, and researchers and labs could order vials of HeLa cells through catalogues. The production and sale of HeLa cells became a multi-million-dollar industry. Lacks's surviving children, however, continued to live in poverty in Baltimore, unaware of their mother's contributions to science
5. Media coverage and scientific interest eventually made its way to the Lacks family. Scientists sought the children's DNA to better map Henrietta's genome, and the media sought to learn more about the woman behind the cells. One journalist easily obtained Henrietta's medical records and published large portions of them without the family's knowledge or consent. Thousands profited from HeLa cells and their story, but the Lacks family never saw a penny.
6. Today, laws protect patients' privacy and require consent for all invasive medical procedures. However, the debate about who owns human tissue once it has left its owner's body is still unsettled. The legal and scientific communities must balance the rights of human subjects with the benefits to science that human cells can provide. the rare occasions when human cells provide the kind of scientific - and economic value that HeLa did, who should benefit? While there is no doubt that the Lacks family was first dismissed and later exploited, this bioethical debate is far from settled.