Henrietta Lacks, Immortal

Pictured is Henrietta Lacks, who has the distinction of being immortal.  Unfortunately, it’s probably not in a way she would’ve ever asked for.

On February 1, 1951, she was diagnosed with cervical cancer.  Less than a year later, the disease had killed her…but not all of her.  A sample of her cancer cells were preserved and given to a scientist, Dr. George Gey, to study.

As it turned out, Henrietta’s cancer cells were spectacularly successful at surviving in laboratory conditions.  Dr. Gey called them HeLa cells and introduced them into the scientific community at large as a cell line for scientific research.

It wasn’t until decades later that scientists realized how successful they were at survival.  As it turned out, HeLa cells could survive travel by air.  Large numbers of scientific experiments were utterly ruined when existing  cell cultures were contaminated by rogue HeLa cells that had spread across labs throughout the country.

Despite all the trouble they caused scientists, as well as the heartache they caused Henrietta’s family, HeLa cells have taught us a lot about cancer and biology.