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Human Cells Quotes

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Human Cells Quotes

“Since the Common Rule says that research subjects must be allowed to withdraw from research at any time, these experts have told me that, in theory, the Lacks family might be able to withdraw HeLa cells from all research worldwide. And in fact, there are precedents for such a case, including one in which a woman successfully had her father’s DNA removed from a database in Iceland. Every researcher I’ve mentioned that idea to shudders at the thought of it.”

Property RightsMedical ResearchHelaHenrietta LacksHuman Cells
Book:The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
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“I’ve tried to imagine how she’d feel knowing that her cells went up in the first space missions to see what would happen to human cells in zero gravity, or that they helped with some of the most important advances in medicine: the polio vaccine, chemotherapy, cloning, gene mapping, in vitro fertilization. I’m pretty sure that she—like most of us—would be shocked to hear that there are trillions more of her cells growing in laboratories now than there ever were in her body.”

HelaHenrietta LacksHuman CellsMedical Advancement
Book:The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
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“The American Type Culture Collection—a nonprofit whose funds go mainly toward maintaining and providing pure cultures for science—has been selling HeLa since the sixties. When this book went to press, their price per vial was $256. The ATCC won’t reveal how much money it brings in from HeLa sales each year, but since HeLa is one of the most popular cell lines in the world, that number is surely significant.”

Medical ResearchHelaHenrietta LacksHuman CellsAtccCell Cultures
Book:The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
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“Day wouldn’t have understood the concept of immortal cells or HLA markers coming from anyone, accent or not—he’d only gone to school for four years of his life, and he’d never studied science. The only kind of cell he’d heard of was the kind Zakariyya was living in out at Hagerstown. So he did what he’d always done when he didn’t understand something a doctor said: he nodded and said yes.”

EducationHelaHenrietta LacksHuman CellsDay LacksMedical Disclosure
Book:The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
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“Everyone in the audience knew what that meant. On top of saying they’d possibly wasted more than a decade and millions of research dollars, Gartler was also suggesting that spontaneous transformation—one of the most celebrated prospects for finding a cure for cancer—might not exist. Normal cells didn’t spontaneously become cancerous, he said; they were simply taken over by HeLa.”

HelaHenrietta LacksHuman CellsAtccCulture ContaminationGenetic MarkerStanley Gartler
Book:The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
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“Ultimately the judge threw Moore’s suit out of court, saying he had no case. Ironically, in his decision, the judge cited the HeLa cell line as a precedent for what happened with the Mo cell line. The fact that no one had sued over the growth or ownership of the HeLa cell line, he said, illustrated that patients didn’t mind when doctors took their cells and turned them into commercial products. The judge believed Moore was unusual in his objections. But in fact, he was simply the first to realize there was something potentially objectionable going on.”

PatentsMedical ResearchSpleenHelaHenrietta LacksHuman CellsCell LinesJohn MooreCell DonorsDavid Golde
Author:Rebecca Skloot
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