Conscience. Innovation. Alleviations. These three words all coincide in the creation of medicine. One could say the world of medicine all-round has drastically changed over the past couple of decades, but does anyone know the original reasoning behind it all? Hela cells. Not necessarily the cells themselves has changed anything, but the person they were taken from; Henrietta Lacks, an African-American woman whom was born August 1, 1920. Before passing on October 4, 1951, Henrietta approached Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, trying to find out what was bringing her awful abnormal pains and abdominal bleeding: soon after she was diagnosed with Cervical Cancer and treated with radium and x-ray therapy. During one particular visit tissue samples were taken from Henrietta while being ‘treated’ for her cancer and studied.
Rebecca Skloot wrote, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, bringing to light the ‘complex social issues’ and ‘ethical dilemmas’ that entwined with HeLa cells and medical research. Skloots book goes on to expose the unscrupulous way the hospital treated the family, and also shows it might not have been just them. What the world was told to know was the outbreak of the precious tumor cells that would help with sicknesses and mend the families being torn. Without the founding of
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“The HeLa cell line has been the foundation of a remarkable number of medical advances, including the polio vaccine, the cancer drug tamoxifen, chemotherapy, gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, and treatments for influenza, leukemia, and Parkinson’s disease.” Although the cells themselves are cancer cells they have numerous characteristics that relate them to any normal cell. Being that the cells were more endured to other viruses because of their rapid growth they became an impossible force against the