Henrietta Lacks' Cells May Be Responsible For The Future Of Medicine

When Henrietta Lacks, a 31-year-old black woman from Virginia, sought treatment for stomach pain at Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins Hospital in 1951, doctors discovered a fast-growing cancerous tumor on Lacks’ cervix. Doctors harvested Lacks’ cells without her permission during surgery ― a clear ethical violation today ― in the hopes of using them for scientific research. Those same cells continued to replicate long after her death from cervical cancer, however, and they fueled some of the most noteworthy scientific advancements in modern medicine. Now “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” a movie staring television personality Oprah Winfrey, based on the 2010 book of the same name, seeks to cement Lacks’ place in medical history. “I am a student of the African American culture ... I have never, in all of my readings, in all of my stories, heard of HeLa or Henrietta Lacks,” Oprah said at press event in April. “I could not believe that. How could I have been in this town all this time and never seen one thing about her?” For a snapshot of how influential Lacks’ cells, also called HeLa cells, have been on science, look no further than PubMed, the National Institutes of Health’s online library for medical research. Searching “HeLa” nets more than 90,000 results. Indeed, HeLa’s influence is so widespread, involved and often, interconnected, that’s it’s im...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news