Wikimedia Commons
Once there was a woman whose cells were immortal . What does this imply ? Today , these cells have multiply in laboratories worldwide to the point that , if you were to weigh all the cells that currently exist , they ’d consider about 50 million metric tons — about as much as 100 Empire State Buildings . So who was this char , and why are scientists keeping her cells supplied with sweet nutrients so they can live on ?
The woman was Henrietta Lacks , and her immortal cells — dubbed " HeLa"—have been all-important in many of the cracking scientific discovery of our time : curing polio ; factor mapping ; learning how cells work ; developing drug to deal Crab , herpes , leukaemia , influenza , hemophilia , Parkinson ’s disease , AIDS … and the listing go on and on ( and on ) . If it deals with the human body and has been studied by scientist , odds are those scientists needed and used Lacks ' cell somewhere along the way . HeLa prison cell were even send up to distance on an remote-controlled orbiter to ascertain whether or not human tissue could survive in zero gravity .
Lacks was an necessitous ignominious adult female who died on October 4 , 1951 of cervical cancer at just 31 years old . During her malignant neoplastic disease treatment , a doctor at Johns Hopkins took a sample of her neoplasm without her knowledge or consent and place it over to a colleague of his , Dr. George Gey , who had been seek for 20 yr , unsuccessfully , to turn human tissues from cultures . A lab assistant there , Mary Kubicek , strike that Henrietta ’s cell , unlike normal human cellular phone , could populate and replicate outside the organic structure .
Go to just about any cellular phone culture lab in the world and you ’ll find gazillion of HeLa cells stored there . In demarcation to normal human cells , which will die after a few replications , Lacks ' cells can live and replicate just fine outside of the human consistency ( which is also singular among humans ) . Give her cells the nutrients they require to last , and they will seemingly live and replicate along forever , almost 60 age and counting since the first culture was taken . They can be freeze for literally ten and , when thawed , they ’ll go right on replicating .
Before her cells were discovered and widely civilised , it was nearly unimaginable for scientists to dependably try out on human cubicle and get meaningful results . Cell cultures that scientists were studying would weaken and expire very quickly outside the human consistency . Lacks ' mobile phone gave scientists , for the first clock time , a “ monetary standard ” that they could use to try things on . HeLa cells can hold up being ship in the mail just okay , so scientist across the orb can expend the same standard to test against .
Lacks die of uremic intoxication , in the unintegrated infirmary ward for blacks , about 8 month after being diagnosed with cervical cancer , never make out that her cells would become one of the most full of life tools in modernistic medicine and would breed a multi - billion clam diligence . She was survived by her hubby and five child ; the familylived in povertyfor most of their animation , and did n’t find out about the luck of Lacks ' incredible mobile phone until years later .
If you ’d like to know more about Henrietta Lacks and her immortal cell , check outThe Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacksby Rebecca Skloot .
