Henrietta Lacks and Her Immortal Cancer Cells
February 2, 2010
--
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
--
1 comment:
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.
Post a Comment