Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Henrietta Lacks and Her Immortal Cancer Cells


February 2, 2010
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Second Opinion A Lasting Gift to Medicine That Wasn’t Really a Gift
By DENISE GRADY

Fifty years after Henrietta Lacks died of cervical cancer in the “colored” ward at Johns Hopkins Hospital, her daughter finally got a chance to see the legacy she had unknowingly left to science.

Photo Left: Henrietta Lacks and her husband


A researcher in a lab at Hopkins swung open a freezer door and showed the daughter, Deborah Lacks-Pullum, thousands of vials, each holding millions of cells descended from a bit of tissue that doctors had snipped from her mother’s cervix.

Ms. Lacks-Pullum gasped. “Oh God,” she said. “I can’t believe all that’s my mother.”...link to complete NYT article
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1 comment:

NaijaDreamie said...

I just picked up the book completely unaware that it's a new release. So far, it's an incredible story. It makes me wonder if I have cells out there being used for science. Worse yet, are those cells making a profit? Crazy.