Women in Black History: First "immortal" cells came from a sista

[femmenoire]

On Oct. 4, 1951, Henrietta Lacks died of cervical cancer at Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore. Poor and black, the daughter of tobacco pickers in rural Virginia, and mother of five, the 31-year-old woman might have died in obscurity, forgotten by all but her immediate family and friends.


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But Henrietta Lacks will live forever - in laboratories and research centers worldwide that use her unique, immortal cells for medical research. The cells of her cancer, known as HeLa cells, were the first human cells discovered to thrive and multiply outside the body, seemingly forever, allowing researchers to conduct experiments previously impossible.

HeLa cells were instrumental in creating the polio vaccine and may, one day, help cure cancer. In what has become a billion-dollar industry, HeLa cells have traveled around the world and been shot into space.


http://www.citypaper.com/news/story.asp?id=3426


http://www.jhu.edu/~jhumag/0400web/01.html

 

[Rythm]

Lacks-Pullum is bitter about this. "We never knew they took her cells, and people done got filthy rich [from HeLa-based research], but we don't get a dime," she says. The family can't afford a reputable lawyer to press its case for some financial stake in the work. She says she has appealed to Hopkins for help, and "all they do is pat me on my shoulder and put me out the door."


This is an amazing piece of history

T/Y

 

[ladyscorpio]

Thanks femme great post.