The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks Essay

Dr. George Gey was responsible for Henrietta’s treatment and as a result, gave him access to her cells; this allowed Gey to carry out tests on Henrietta’s cancer cells without her knowledge. This led to George Gey taking and culturing Henrietta’s without permission. That’s when Gey noticed something unusual about the cells, Henrietta’s cultured cells began to expand at a rapid rate, “They kept growing like nothing anyone had seen, doubling their numbers every twenty-four hours, stacking hundreds on top of hundreds, accumulating by the millions” (page 57). This demonstrates the growth of Henrietta’s cells and the importance of this discovery. Gey told his closest colleagues about his discovery which led to him distributing the cells to different

Mary Kubicek went through the same procedure with Henrietta’s cells as she had done with hundreds before, writing HeLa on each of the vials of cells in culture. At the time, she was just taking the first two letters of Henrietta Lacks’ first and last names to make a short form, as was done with all of the other cells. Little did she know that the name she just wrote (HeLa) would soon be a common word in laboratories around the world. The Gey laboratory had been trying for years to get human cells to reproduce outside of the body, but most cells that they worked on died quickly and the few that didn’t, hardly grew at all. Some hours after placing the cells into the vials, Mary returned to check on them, not expecting anything to have happened, as had been the case hundreds of times before. When she looked in the vials, the cells had grown and started to reproduce, so she had to move some into new vials to let the cells have more room to grow. She told George Gey, but he didn’t want to get very excited since they still could die any minute. But the HeLa cells continued to grow, reproducing an entire generation every 24 hours, and they never

George has violated the personal rights of Henrietta Lacks. George did not chart that the patient filled out a consent form; therefore, the patient had no idea that her cells were being stripped from her body. Henrietta’s cells were cancerous and used for cancer research. Her cells grew like no one had ever seen which gave Gey the idea to ship them to other researchers. Gey named the cells HeLa so no one knew the face behind the cells. This criminal

Henrietta Lacks died never knowing the impact her life would have on the world of medicine. A poor, black woman living in Baltimore, Maryland in the 1950s, Henrietta was diagnosed with cervical cancer and died only nine short months after her diagnosis at the age of thirty-one. The mother of five children, Henrietta most likely died thinking her family would be her legacy. Little did she know her doctor at John Hopkins hospital, George Gey, had taken some of her cells before she died. With Henrietta’s cells, Dr. Gey was finally able to achieve a goal he had been working toward for decades – creating the first line of immortal cells (Freeman). These cells have been used for countless scientific research and have solidified Henrietta Lacks’ place

Due to the fact that Henrietta’s cells were the first human cells grown in a lab that did not die after a few cell divisions, they could be used for conducting many experiments. Her cells were considered “immortal”. This was a major breakthrough in medical and biological research. One major breakthrough was the development of a vaccine for polio. To test the vaccine the cells were quickly put into mass production in the first-ever cell production factory. Another enormous breakthrough was the successful cloning of human cells in 1955. Demand for the HeLa cells grew quickly. Since they were put into mass production, Henrietta’s cells have been mailed to scientists around the globe from “research into cancer, AIDS, the effects of radiation and toxic substances, gene mapping, and countless other scientific pursuits.” (Smith, 2002, "Wonder Woman: The Life, Death, and Life After Death of Henrietta Lacks, Unwitting Heroine of Modern Medical Science".) HeLa cells have been used to test human sensitivity to tape, glue, cosmetics, and many other products. Scientists have grown some 20 tons of her cells, and there are almost 11,000 patents involving HeLa cells. (Batts, 2010)

Racism is immortal just like Henrietta’s cells it will always be around. People would do anything to be the first to discover something. At the end of the day it’s all about the money. The Mississippi appendectomies and the Tuskegee experiments were similar in the way that the government forced treatment upon minorities without consent. Henrietta’s case was different than Mississippi and Tuskegee because the doctor in Johns Hopkins didn’t experiment on her actual body but on her cells without consent. Henrietta’s case the Tuskegee experiments and the Mississippi Appendectomies are all different cases in different locations but serve the same purpose which is to take advantage of poor and uneducated minorities to

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.

After Gey succeeded to find the immortal human cells, he started to sell HeLa cells without Henrietta’s consent. “Gey sells HeLa cells to researchers in Texas, India, New York, and many others place” (Skloot 84). He did not give any credit to Henrietta. He only told Henrietta that her cells will help many people in the future. “In fact, in the future HeLa cells were contribute into polio vaccine; develop drugs for treating herpes, leukemia, influenza, hemophilia, and Parkinson’s disease” (Skloot 22). Hela cells were also used in cancer treatment and were the first cells that were shot into space.

Henrietta Lacks was born on August 1, 1920, in Roanoke, Virginia. Lacks died of cervical cancer on October 4, 1951, at age 31. Cells taken from her body without her knowledge were used to form the HeLa cell line. Lacks's case has sparked legal and ethical debates over the rights of an individual to his or her genetic material and tissue.

Gey was able to contribute to the advancements made in science not only by collecting the cells but also by making an abundance of advancements in the field of cell culture. Being able to collect, cultivate, and ship the cells already contributed to the advancements made not only by making it possible to see the effects of certain diseases and vaccines on human cells but also because it showed new techniques of shipping live human cells: “Gey sent them [cells] via plane in tubes with a few drops of culture medium, just enough to keep them alive for a short time… [or] tucked them into holes carved in blocks of ice to keep them from overheating” (Skloot 57). This in turn allowed Henrietta’s legacy to grow because she could survive a long time with few necessities. Dr. Gey was able to show that in ice the cells slow their processes of metastasizing and this keeps them from dying; thus creating a process called spontaneous transformation allowing for scientist to observe a transforming somatic cell during the process of mitosis. This process was able to make Henrietta’s legacy grow as aiding the formation of the cell cycle. Dr. Gey also made a technique of “growing in suspension” in which “they [HeLa cells] could grow floating in a culture medium that was constantly stirred by a magnetic device” (pg 94) decreasing space required to hold the same amount of HeLa, allowing for more cells and more experimentation, which increased Henrietta’s legacy. Dr. Gey contributed a lot to

Henrietta Lacks: an unknown name up until recent years. A name that had been known to the world only as HeLa; The first two letters of a name that belonged to a poor African American tobacco farmer that unknowingly changed science and life as we know it today. Her life has finally been portrayed in a very intimate story that not only does her life some justice but also transcendentally brings to mind the philosophical issues concerning medical ethics both of the past, present, and the future. In a world of constantly evolving medical advancement, science is a pivotal force that propels ideas forward. Although most will agree that the knowledge and cures found are a positive aspect, there is also a necessary evil that is involved, including

Finding discoveries that would greatly benefit medicine have always been difficult to achieve in cancer research. Though, everything changed on February 1, 1951, when Howard Jones discovered that Henrietta Lacks had cervical cancer. When George Gey heard of this, he took samples from Henrietta Lacks’ tumor, and found something that changed for future medical research. George Gey had noticed that Henrietta Lacks’ cancer cells was the first human cell line that could be consistently passaged. The cells were later called HeLa cells, which were named after Henrietta Lacks. Even though scientists greatly benefited from it, Henrietta Lacks, nor her family profited from it.

First, Dr. Gey decided to take Henrietta Lacks’ (who had cervical cancer) cells without informing her and then sent them to be researched. Henrietta’s cells then became one of the biggest discoveries and

Then it was transferred to George Gey’s lab, where they would cultivate it and attempt to grow new cells from the sample, however, there was not much hope for the sample, as they all eventually died within days, sometimes even hours. Henrietta’s cells changed this, after multiple days of being cultivated and still living, Gey began to realize that he had discovered something amazing, and he slowly started to share his discovery with the world.

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.