By Jeremy Singer-Vine
Published Feb. 2, 2010 by Slate
In February1951, Henrietta Lacks lay unconscious, her feet in stirrups, at Johns Hopkins Hospital as doctors examined the particularly aggressive cervical cancer that would soon kill her. The 31-year-old had traveled 20 miles to Hopkins, the nearest major hospital that would treat black patients. She may have been a regular patient, but she was about to achieve an odd form of immortality in the medical world.
At the time, Hopkins' head of tissue culture research, George Gey, was refining the art of sustaining cells in stews of placental blood, chicken plasma, and other savory ingredients. After her surgery, Lacks' surgeon passed a thin disc of her cancerous cells to Gey's lab. Those cells became the first human tissue to replicate indefinitely in test tubes, launching a series of revolutions in medicine. The value of the so-called HeLa cell line that sprung from Lacks' tumor is incalculable: Its resilience and rapid growth made it ideal for testing Jonas Salk's polio vaccine, developing numerous cancer drugs, studying basic cellular processes, and honing experimental methods now standard in biology. Over the years, Lacks' cells have been sold for $10 to as much as $10,000 a vial—and her chronically impoverished family has received nothing.
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