I Am Legend: Doctor Allice Krippin

Two very important viruses that HeLa cells were used to study were HPV, and HIV, scientist learned that "HPV inserts its DNA into the DNA of the host cell, where it produces proteins that cause cancer (Skloot, Pg. 213)" . Scientist could even further modify HeLa cells to act like specific cells by inserting the DNA of one cell into the other cell, in this case scientist took the DNA of red blood cells and inserted it into the HeLa cells, making them susceptible to be infected by HIV (Skloot, Pg. 214). Researchers could then research medical viruses by altering HeLa cells making them even more useful. Additionally, HeLa cells weren't the only immortal cells still being used, a new line called MO was developed, which originated from John Moore who had hairy cell leukemia a very rare form of blood cancer, and with different types of cancer cells came with new "rare proteins that pharmaceutical companies could use to treat infection and cancer" (Skloot,

HeLa simply stands for Henrietta Lacks, a young mother in the 1951 who went to the doctor complaining of vaginal bleeding and discovered she had cervical cancer. Henrietta’s cells were taken for a biopsy and were found to be like nothing ever seen before; her cells were immortal. Her cancer cells double every 20 to 24 hours and have lived on for the past 60 years. Since HeLa cells were created, our world of modern medicine has been completely changed. We now vaccines for once incurable diseases and have used the cells for cloning and other biomedical research. Although the cells have done a great deal of good,

In the 1950’s there was a woman named Henrietta Lacks who had a condition of cervical cancer. She went to the doctors and one of them took her cells without her consent. The scientist started to do test on her cells that they extracted from Henrietta. They sent her cells to space to perform test and gather research on the effect of space travel on cells. They conducted all kinds of experiments oh her cells for all different kinds of diseases in order to find an antidote. Henrietta’s family had no idea what was going on, that her cells were being grown, multiplied and tested on. Henrietta later died in the hospital, her cancer cells lived on. With more research being conducted more scientist found solutions to some of the world’s diseases.

Viruses, Plagues, and History, written by Michael Oldstone, is an insightful and highly educational book that details the history of, that’s right, viruses and plagues. Through typically dry, yet engaging prose, Oldstone recounts what seems like all of it while simultaneously bringing to light the contributions of those brave scientists who asked themselves, “why.” He focuses his attention on some of the most notable viruses such as smallpox, yellow fever, measles, polio, and later he focuses on more contemporary battles against disease.

For this patient’s karyotype, she exhibits HeLa₆₇, for 67 chromosomes. HeLa cells are infected by HPV-18, a virus closely linked to cervical cancer. The HeLa karyotype is a very resilient line of cells, and is actually the first line of human cells to survive in a test tube. Named after a cervical-cancer patient, Henrietta Lacks, the cells were taken (without her knowledge) from Lacks' tissue samples for researcher Dr. George Gey in 1951 to grow and distribute to other scientists for their experiments. HeLa cells are considered to be immortal because what researchers found was that these cells are divide indefinitely instead of dying after various divisions like normal cells. HeLa cells are infected with various diseases in order to make identifying genetic diseases easier for researchers. HeLa cells were used to find the polio vaccine and today, these cells are grown with viruses to test antitumor treatments. Cervical cancer used to be the leading cause of death among women in the United States and was the cause of death for Henrietta Lacks. However through her cells and over 5 decades of research, there has been a significant decline in cervical-cancer related deaths, only about 4,074 annually according to the CDC. Treatment for HeLa cells of this karyotype in order to combat the cervical cancer

Dr. Brennen, a forensic anthropologist, finds remains all throughout the book in different scenarios. She finds human bones among lots of bear bones in a bag in the woods and she examines the remains of a baby found in a wood stove, in a plane crash, privy, and a submerged car. She briefly goes into discussion of what she does as a forensic anthropologist. She uses her knowledge of bones to identify the cause and manner of death in victims that are too compromised for autopsy; meaning there is little to no tissue left for a proper autopsy. (Reichs 2004:16). She also uses various methods throughout the book to identify the sex, age, stature, and ancestry, as well as securing an identification of the victim.

In the novel, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot, scientists steal cancerous cells from a middle aged black woman named Henrietta Lacks without her consent. She soon passed away and her cells were then put in culture and, unlike any other cells previously, succeeded in growing and reproducing outside of the body. This new breakthrough led to a scientific revolution that changed the world as we know it. The cells, called HeLa, were mass produced in factories and distributed all around the world. They allowed scientists to conduct studies and experiments that were impossible before; consequently, numerous new discoveries and cures were made and polio was eradicated. However, Henrietta’s family had no idea what her cells did

Gey found that he was producing so many HeLa cells, and he saw the potential that these cells had to advance medical technology, so he began sending samples of HeLa internationally to laboratories everywhere. At this time, between 1951 and 1952, the world faced a polio epidemic. Researchers were doing to polio vaccine research, but didn’t have samples of the virus itself in order to perform their tests and experiments. One of Dr. Gey’s collaborators found that polio responded positively to exposure to HeLa. They found that injecting the polio virus into a HeLa cell, through mitosis, would result in the creation of a new polio virus, kind of like copy-and-pasting the virus itself. This discovery became a revolution in modern science, and immediately, a HeLa cell producing factory was built at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. There, the virus was produced in enough quantity that doctors were able to do their vaccine testing, and develop a polio vaccine by 1952. As a result, polio was all but removed from the

The next section, death, shows how HeLa helped prevent premature death due to certain diseases, including polio. In 1951, the world saw the biggest polio, epidemic in history. In 1952, a man named Jonas Salk announced he had found a cure for polio but there was one problem; he needed to test it on a large scale before offering it to children. However, to do that he would need “culturing cells on an enormous, industrial scale, which no one had done before” (Skloot 93). The NFIP (National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis) “began organizing the largest field trial ever conducted to test the polio vaccine” (Skloot 93). The cells used in neutralization tests came from monkeys, which were very expensive at the time, so the NFIP turned to expert cell culturists, including George Gey, who realized HeLa was unlike any human cells he had seen. As long as HeLa was susceptible to polio, the mass-production problem would be solved and it would be cheaper for the NFIP. In April 1952, William Scherer tried infecting HeLa with the poliovirus and found it is even more susceptible to

Allen, Paula Gunn. Pocahontas: Medicine Woman, Spy, Entrepreneur, Diplomat. 1st ed. New York: HarperCollins, 2004. Print.

Chapter 19: "The Most Critical Time on This Earth Is Now" Quote: "Joe walked away from the murder scene, dropped the knife in a nearby alley, and headed to a pay phone to call his father, but the police had beaten him to it. They'd told Day his son had killed a boy. Sonny and Lawrence told their father to get Joe to Clover, back to the tobacco farms, where he could hide from the law and be safe" (Skloot, 147).

I am highly recommending the application of Dr. Lucille Lange for appointment to the FDA Fellowship Program. The purpose of this letter is to share with you how extremely impressed I am with Dr. Lange’s abilities and aptitude, as well as her facility and ability to lead and inspire young adults to grow professionally. I have known Dr. Lange since July of 2001. We worked together at the Division of Neuroscience at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. We worked together in various collaborative efforts when I was the Deputy Chief for the Research Division at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Chemical Defense. In consonance with my research objectives, she assisted our team in the critical research area of chemical warfare

Scientists could predict how many people could die in a period of time. Since 1966, way before Dugas become a sexually active, scientist trace the virus not only in US, but also in places such as Haiti and Africa. Scientists took samples of blood from 1959, 1960 and bodies from 1908 they found the HVI virus in those samples. Beatrice Hahn, a professor from University of Pennsylvania, help to search for a much earlier Patient Zero, by taking it to Africa, and turning back the clock on a series of virus mutations and pinpointing with a diverse viruses such as SIV (simian immune virus), AGM (African green monkey) among many more of cross-species spillover (term scientists use to describe a moment a virus in one specie passes to other spice) in a jungle in Cameroon. A virus hunter, Nathan Wolfe, professor in human biology in Stanford University, takes it back even farther to an intracellular investigation in monkeys, gorillas, and chimps. Concluding with an intense research in chimps in a different places of West Africa, with a data, samples of major groups of HIV, and viruses from chimps created a model of “chimp Patient zero” hundreds of thousands of years

     When the satellite crashes to Earth, the special team of four people that the government had previously selected, was called to this building. They had samples of the organism, which was found by other people at the crash site sent to the building. They were going to use this sample to research the organism. They hoped to find out what it was and how it killed all of the people who lived in the small town in Arizona. Everything was going well with the research, until the virus started eating through plastic containers and the sterile suits that the workers were wearing. After time, almost all of the workers who were in the building had been killed by this virus. The only person that lived out of the five people who were on the selected team was Mark Hall.

Gene therapy has saved many lives and given a second chance to many people. Gene therapy was used to treat a girl 6 years old named Emma who was suffering from leukemia. The doctors had tried many treatments to cure Emma from cancer and nothing was working even though, kids at her age have an 85% chance to survive. She was on the verge of death when gene therapy was used to alter Emma’s immune cells to genetically kill cancer cells. Emma has been cancer free for two years and is living the life of a normal child.