The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Black scientists and technicians, many of them women, used cells from a black woman to help save the lives of millions of Americans,

first immortal human cells. To which they replied, Can I have some? And George said yes.

“What are we going to do,” he says, “throw them all out?”

would like some health insurance so I don’t got to pay all that money every month for drugs my mother cells probably helped make.”

Havasupai Tribe sued Arizona State University after scientists took tissue samples the tribe donated for diabetes research and used them without consent to study schizophrenia and inbreeding.

consent for storing tissues for research, there is no clear requirement for telling donors when their tissues might result in profits.

Henrietta died the day they sent Elsie away, that losing her was worse than anything else that happened to her. Now, nearly a year later, Henrietta still had Day or a cousin take her from Turner Station to Crownsville once a week to sit with Elsie, who’d cry and cling to her as they played with each other’s hair.

This process correlates with the age of a person: the older we are, the shorter our telomeres, and the fewer times our cells have left to divide before they die.

The debate over the commercialization of human biological materials always comes back to one fundamental point: like it or not, we live in a market-driven society, and science is part of that market.