How an African-American woman revolutionized medicine
When I first read the book “The immortal cells of Henrietta Lacks,” I was quite astonished that I did not learn anything about Henrietta Lacks in my high school biology classes.
This woman completely remodelled medicine; however, Lacks never agreed that scientists could use her cells from her biopsy for research (which generated billions of dollars). Yet after her death, her family did not receive any compensation.
I feel the need to share the knowledge that I have gained because I believe that more individuals should be educated about this.
Introduction
Henrietta Lacks was diagnosed with cervical cancer and passed away on October 4, 1951, at the age of 31. Unbeknownst to Lacks, Doctors took a sample of her cells, which prompt many ethical debates.
Henrietta Lacks was an Africain-American woman who could not afford any medical attention in the 1950s, yet today she is one of the foundations for modern medicine. Now, her cells are immortal, and they are around the world. Her cells became the most popular cell line in many labs helping create cures and treatments of such.
Background
Henrietta Lacks was born in Roanoke, Virginia on August 1, 1920. At the age of four, her mother died from giving birth to her tenth child. Her father who was unable to nurture all ten children moves his family to Clover, Virginia.
He then distributes his children among different relatives, and Henrietta ended up with her grandfather Tommy who was a tobacco farmer. Henrietta was given a shared room with her first cousin David Lacks who was five years older than her.
At the age of 14 years old, she had a son named, Lawrence Lacks with David. Then in 1939, they had another beautiful child named Elsie; however, she suffered from epilepsy due to congenital syphilis that Henrietta passed down during pregnancy. They eventually went on to have three more children named David, Deborah, and Joseph Lacks. Due to incest, it increased the chance of copied deleterious genes being passed down to her children. As a result, some of her children have some complications such as hearing problems.
Discovery and Impact
When Henrietta discovered a lump on her cervix, she immediately went to a local doctor who sent her to Johns Hopkins, where the majority of their patients were black. She received her test back stating positive for cervical cancer, then undergoing treatment with radium tubes.
However, during her treatments, her doctor took samples of her tumour without her consent and sent it to Dr. Gey. At the time Dr. George Otto Gey was a remarkable cancer researcher and had been accumulating cervical cancer cells from John Hopkins Hospital for his cell culture research.
In cell culture, it states that cancer cells can continue to divide perpetually if they have a source of nutrients. Back then cultured cells only lasted for a few days because normal cells have a limited number of cell divisions before they die. After all, they are not able to produce more telomerase.
Telomerase → Nucleotides sequences that are found at the ends of chromosomes that protect genetic materials. Through every DNA replications, our telomerase shorten. Many scientific studies have shown a strong correlation between short telomeres and cellular ageing.
However, when George cultured Henrietta’s cells, they kept on reproducing at an accelerating rate, and the cells preserved alive for a long time. This is because cancer cells cultured in labs are able to produce telomerase. Therefore, making her cells the first immortal cells ever to be discovered.
Gey decided to name this immortal cell as HeLa which is the first two letters of the patient’s first and last name. The name HeLa became the name of the cell line.
HeLa became a crucial part of the revolution of medicine. With her cells, we were able to find the number of chromosomes in a normal cell. In the book ‘The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks’, a geneticist in Texas accidentally split the chromosomes in her cell by mixing with the wrong liquids. As a result, he was discovered that humans have forty-six chromosomes in a cell. This is valuable for medical diagnostics, which discovered that there is an extra chromosome with patients with Down syndrome.
Additionally, when Lacks passed away, a polio outbreak occurred. Jonas Salk had already discovered a cure to not eradicate but rather prevent polio. However, traditionally he would use monkey cells to test them, but it was too expensive because polio would kill the cell before acquiring the results. As a result, Jonas used HeLa cells because polio could not kill them. A laboratory reproducing HeLa cells was at the Tuskegee Institute, which allowed Jonas Salk to test the vaccine. HeLa cells were also essential for mapping the human genome.
In the 1960s Harris and Watkins generated the first human-animal hybrid cell with a mouse. Since every hybrid gene is different, scientists would look at the type of proteins the cell created. Then they go on to see which human genes produce which protein.
Unfortunately, Henrietta Lacks passed away a year after she found out she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cervical cancer. However, her cells remain immortal and HeLa cells have helped with a lot of different discoveries in the science and medical fields. Till this day HeLa cells are still being used in laboratories. Her cells are also used for further understanding of cancer, HIV/AIDS, etc.
Ethical Issues
Although HeLa cells have revolutionized modern medicine, Henrietta Lack nor her family had not permitted to take her cells in the first place. Additionally, Dr. Gey distributed his HeLa cells without the family’s knowledge. Gey also asked David Lacks (Henrietta’s husband) for permission to acquire more samples of different tumours. However, David Lacks was not informed about the usage of her cells. Back then there was no law or code of ethics to govern such matters.
Her cells were used to conduct medical research and scientist would gain profit from using her cells globally. Henrietta’s family lived in poverty and never received money from HeLa cells. In the mass media, their medical records were released and published without their knowledge or consent. The Lacks family had no knowledge about the HeLa cells until 20 years after her death.
Additionally, in March 2013, a group of researchers led by Lars Steinmetz at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) published a genome of HeLa cells and it was made available for the public on SNPedia. I believe that it is unethical and a privacy breach because this information may reveal the genetic traits of her family members. For instance, it may reveal the likely hood she or her family members of inheriting different disorders.
Despite the unethical measures, HeLa cells have helped make many medical advancements and continue to do so today.
