Who is Henrietta Lacks? You may of may not have heard of that name before. Maybe you will have heard of HeLa, but not know the story behind those four letters.
Henrietta Lacks (NOT Helen Lane as some people thought), was an African-American woman, who is undoubtedly one of the most important people to ever have existed in the field of science. In 1951, Henrietta was diagnosed with cervical cancer, a sample of her cells were collected , cultured by George Gey, and were found to be immortal: they reproduced indefinitely under certain conditions. No consent was obtained to culture her cells, and her family have not been compensated for their use in research and medicine. They were not even aware of her cells being used as a cell line until 1975, years after researchers were aware of their origin.
Her cells have been involved in research into HIV and cancer treatments, as well as having a pivotal role in the creation of the polio vaccine. The patents using her cells are in the thousands. To put it simply, without her, science would not have made the advances it has. In March 2013, the genome of the HeLa cell line was published, again without consent. It was ruled in 1990 by the Supreme Court of California that a persons cells once removed from their body are not their property, so therefore can be used for commercial use. Throughout this, Henrietta’s family were not compensated or consulted, and faced many issues regarding privacy and consent. It wasn’t until August 2013 when the family were given some control over access to the cells' DNA sequence. For more information about Henrietta’s family and her background, I’d strongly recommend reading the book “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” by Rebecca Skloot.
Henrietta’s cells are used to investigate many difference aspects of cancer research, including looking at the effects of flavonoids and antioxidants with estradiol on cancer cell proliferation, and defining cancer markers in RNA. In my own research I started to use HeLa cells to analyse the motility of cancer cells using wound closure assays. Having these cells to investigate cell metastasis in vitro was so important, and I will forever be grateful to Henrietta, however angry I am that she never got to see how important she was.
Personally, I still feel that a person’s cells are their property, and unless consent is given that they should not be used in research. There has since been the establishment of the Henrietta Lacks Foundation. This foundation was set up for “helping individuals who have made important contributions to scientific research without personally benefiting from those contributions, particularly those used in research without their knowledge or consent”. This allows those who have benefitted from contributions, such as that which Henrietta gave, to show their appreciation. The foundation has awarded more than 50 grants to many qualifying members of Henrietta’s immediate family in the form of tuition, health care and other areas.
If there was anything to take away from this post, I would encourage people to look into where the cell lines that they are using in their research come from, and to try and fully appreciate the impact that Henrietta, and others, have given to science.
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