Cells In The 1800's

In 1951, the first immortal cell line was created by a doctor at Johns Hopkins Hospital using tissue samples taken from a young, black woman named Henrietta Lacks. Her cells would come to be known as HeLa cells, and for a very long time, the owner of these cells was a mystery; even her family did not know about them. For years to come, her cells would be used in many important medical and scientific advancements. Over that time, HeLa cells would prove to be instrumental in developing a polio vaccine, gene mapping, and in vitro fertilization. They would even be sent to space to see how cells would react in zero gravity.

Much medical advancement would not have been possible without cancer cells from Henrietta Lacks. While these HeLa cells are infamous in the medical community, the story behind them was barely known by any until Rebecca Skloot uncovered it.1 Information about Henrietta Lacks uncovers a history of consent not being asked for, and certainly not being given, but because of the cells, medical discoveries were made without her family’s knowledge.1 It brings to light the idea that while cells are a part of a person’s body, once they are out of the human body there is no more ownership. Without informed consent though, is it still owned by the person whose cells they are?

This is the story of a cell, a young cell. This cell’s goal was to have the most powerful mitochondria of any other cell she knew. The mitochondria gave energy. She knew if she had a strong mitochondria, her being would be powerful and strong.

I begin writing this essay about Henrietta Lacks by discussing option number three outlined in this project. Before this class had begun, I could not tell you how or why such vaccines came to be. I can almost relate to the author in the beginning of the book when she is in her college biology course and has no idea who Henrietta Lacks is. This book outlines so many big topic issues, and I feel they all play a role in how Henrietta 's cells were recovered, and stored. From my own personal viewpoint, I feel one of the biggest issues for myself personally, is the bioethics of it all.

Henrietta Lacks was a young African American woman. Doctors experimented on her in order to form the HeLa cells, which was an immortal cell line, obtained from her body, and used in scientific research. She was born in Roanoke, Virginia, and known by the name of Loretta Pleasant. When her mother died, she changed her name to Henrietta Lacks, and was sent to live with her grandfather in an old slave quarters. She roomed with her cousin, Day Lacks, who later fathered her two children, Lawrence and Elsie.

Cells are the basic units of structure and function in an organism, and Cells come only from the reproduction of existing cells.

In 1951, a woman named Henrietta Lacks  went to see a doctor at The Johns Hopkins Hospital after noticing pains and problems in her abdomen. Not only did she have pain but she noticed bleeding also.  When she went to the doctors they had diagnosed her with epidermoid carcinoma of the cervix. Henrietta was concerned but the doctors told her that it was good we caught it at stage one and that it's a common cancer for women. The doctors started taking little samples of her tumors so that they could do research on them. The man who was doing the research was named George Guy that specialized in cell culture. Guy had already tried to grow human cells but he failed. To their surprise, they discovered that this particular cell would grow at a rapid rate.

The profound discovery of HeLa cells leads to the world’s obsession with immortality and life, while simultaneously disconnecting HeLa cells from their human roots and the life of Henrietta Lacks. Although the book is composed of many intertwining stories, Skloot’s main story is the life of the Lacks family as Skloot intends remind readers that these exploited cells came from a human. The ancillary stories in the book, including the stories of the vast medical research done using HeLa cells, only enhance the poignancy of Henrietta’s story. Using the knowledge of Henrietta’s relatives and friends, Skloot weaves together their experiences and opinions to create the main story while also providing the readers with a detailed insight of Henrietta’s

For example, the text shows how Henrietta and her family could have avoided this situation. “Today it’s possible for scientists to immortalize cells by exposing them to certain viruses or chemicals, but very few cells have become immortal on their own as Henrietta’s did” (Skloot pg.213). This quote shows that overtime scientists were able to make advancements in technology and their discoveries made cells immortal. Eventually, this became possible and proves that what happened to Henrietta and her family was redundant.

Merriam Webster defines an abstraction as “a general idea or quality rather than an actual person.” Humans are immensely complex creatures who cannot be confined to stereotypes, classifications or labels. Each person is equipped with their own set of traits, talents and capabilities that make them who they are. Viewing a person as simply an abstraction restricts them to a category stating who and what they are allowed to be effectively taking away the uniqueness each and every person has a right to. Both the scientific community and the media are guilty of viewing Henrietta in this way, these individuals exploited her cells without expressed consent for their own personal gain, told her story only when it was convenient for them, and never

Maybe you’ve read about it on a list of amazing facts about the body, or heard a new-agey friend mention it as a form of encouragement…

Schleiden was one of the primary German biologists to declare Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. He became a professor of botany at the University of Dorpat in 1863. He resolved that all plant parts are made of cells and that an undeveloped plant organism arises from the one cell. He studied plant structure under a microscope and saw the inner cell components. He observed that the cell nucleus was very serious, and believed that it might be connected with cell division. Schleiden was a german botanist and founder of the cell theory. Further, he said that plant embryos produced from single cells. He was also an early evolutionist, hypothesizing about the chance of large-scale evolution over time in plants. He further formulated the idea that

Across the planet, four times every second, a new human is conceived. In just nine months, a single cell no bigger than a speck of dust transforms into the most complex organism on earth. There are many events that shape and define us long before we’re born. Right from the start, it’s a journey full of surprises. There are many things that make you who you are today.

But first, let us talk about the discovery of cells and the cell theory. Robert Hooke, an english scientist, was the man who first discovered the cell in 1665, proof being a book he released at that time called Micrographia. In this book, Hooke gave 60 observations of random objects under a compound microscope with a magnification of 30x. Because of this, he was not able to see the internal structures in the cell, like nuclei and vacuoles, and what he proclaimed to be cells were just empty cell walls of plant tissues. He shared his observations with The English Royal Society, until they started receiving letters from a scientist named Anton van Leeuwenhoek. The letters stated that Anton made use of a microscope containing improved lenses that magnified objects up to 275x, enough to identify the living parts of a cell. He kept on sending

Aristotle, a Greek Philosopher, was born in 384 B.C.E. and was known to show an interest in living things. To find out how plants and animals organs sustained life, he collected and dissected them. He deliberately engaged on studying the reproduction of life to see how each generation and actions of living people spoke, remembered, and learned.