When Henrietta Lacks first stepped foot inside John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, she wasn't thinking of changing the world. She arrived at John Hopkins because she was suffering from unexplained vaginal bleeding that would later turn out to be a fatal form of cervical cancer.
The year was 1951, a time when medical science was desperately looking for malignant cells that would grow and proliferate outside the human body. If this could be accomplished, medicine would be closer to understanding and possibly finding a cure for cancer. This was no small feat, little was known about what it took keep these cells alive and contamination of the cell culture was common. Bacteria and other microorganisms could easily destroy any growing cell colony.
But all that was about to change.
Henrietta was just thirty years old when she was diagnosed. The cancer turned out to be a very aggressive type, presenting as a grape colored lesion located at the four o'clock position on the surface of the cervix. The lesion bled easily and seemed to be capable of spreading rapidly. The physician who examined Henrietta took a sample of this tissue and sent it to the lab for analysis.
Some of this tissue ended up in the hands of George Gey.
George Gey was the head of tissue culture research at Hopkins and he set about starting a culture using Henrietta cells. Amazingly these cells turned out to be quite different than any they had seen before. The cells reproduced at an astounding rate, doubling their numbers within the first twenty-four hours. It soon became apparent that George Gey was looking at the first immortal human cells. Soon other labs requested samples for cancer research and Gey responded by sending Henrietta's cells to any scientist who wanted them. Soon these cells would find their way into mass production and turn out to be instrumental in the development of the polio vaccine, drugs for the treatment of various chronic illnesses, secrets of cancer and gene mapping.
Immortality had come to Henrietta Lacks and it was found under a microscope. There, the cells taken from that first biopsy, reproduced faster than any other cells had before, even cancer cells. These cells took on life of their own living independently from the organism they had come from, reproducing and spreading on their own.
Science gave them a name HeLa cells.
In 1991, it was decided that this group of cells should be given its own genus and species: Helacyton gartleri. A new species observed developing from another.
In her short life, Henrietta Lacks had opened the door for the scientific world to take a huge step forward in the advancement of knowledge and achievement in medicine.
The book "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" can be found at Amazon.com and Barnes and Nobel book stores.
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