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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You from how Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm

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Speaker 1: Kristen and I'm Caroline. And as part of our celebration

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Speaker 1: of Black History Month, we wanted to talk about a

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Speaker 1: woman whose name has come up in a number of

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Speaker 1: listener emails that we have gotten requesting that we talk

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Speaker 1: about her, and someone who we absolutely need to talk about,

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Speaker 1: not just because it's Black History Month, but because we

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Speaker 1: have her to think for a lot of modern medical

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Speaker 1: conveniences and practices, and that is Henrietta Lax. Yeah, who

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Speaker 1: was Henrietta Lax? Caroline? Henrietta Lax was a black woman

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Speaker 1: from Virginia who in nine one was diagnosed with terminal

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Speaker 1: server call cancer stage one epidermoid carcinoma of the cervix.

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Speaker 1: She had felt for a couple of years uh and

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Speaker 1: not in her lower stomach, but she didn't go to

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Speaker 1: the doctor. And one day after after bleeding, she she

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Speaker 1: did go to Johns Hopkins, which was the only medical

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Speaker 1: facility in the area who would treat black people, and

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Speaker 1: when she saw the doctor, they found that she had

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Speaker 1: the cervical cancer and that it was growing incredibly fast.

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Speaker 1: Once she was diagnosed. She actually died six months later. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: she was only thirty one years old. And um, she

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Speaker 1: came from a very poor background. She was raised by

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Speaker 1: her grandfather on a tobacco farm. She was a granddaughter

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Speaker 1: of slaves. She married David Lax, had the five kids,

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Speaker 1: and died from the cervical cancer. But before she died,

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Speaker 1: a sample was taken from that those cervical cancer of

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Speaker 1: the cervical cancer cells um. And the thing about cervical

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Speaker 1: cancer at the time was that the pap smere had

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Speaker 1: just been created, and cervical cervical cancer was incredibly difficult

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Speaker 1: to diagnose and with pretty much any patient, any female

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Speaker 1: patient who was being admitted to Johns Hopkins Hospital at

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Speaker 1: the time. They were having samples taken because a team

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Speaker 1: of doctors, doctor George Gay and Margaret Gay, they were

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Speaker 1: husband and wife team. They wanted tissue cultures of the

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Speaker 1: cervical cells because they were looking for a line of

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Speaker 1: human cells that would live indefinitely outside the body in

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Speaker 1: order to study cancer. And the incredible thing about what

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Speaker 1: happened with the sample from Henrietta Lacks was that it

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Speaker 1: did not like almost all of the other previous samples.

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Speaker 1: Dr Gay had taken quickly die in culture. For the

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Speaker 1: most part um normal cells grown outside the body um

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Speaker 1: would divide about fifty times and then they die. And

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Speaker 1: doctors had figured out how to grow cells outside the

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Speaker 1: body in nineteen o seven. So you know this is

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Speaker 1: they've been trying to figure this out for a while.

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Speaker 1: And then all of a sudden, Henry Alax's cells grow

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Speaker 1: like crazy. Yeah, they were doubling every twenty four hours.

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Speaker 1: And doctor Gay could not believe his eyes. He he

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Speaker 1: actually started sending the HeLa cells as they became known

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Speaker 1: to any scientists interested in cancer research. So all of this,

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Speaker 1: like we said, he never asked Henriette A. Lax. He

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Speaker 1: never told her this was going to happen. They just

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Speaker 1: took a sample of the cancer cells and her healthy

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Speaker 1: cervical cells, and once they saw how fast they reproduced

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Speaker 1: and that they were so strong, they figured they had

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Speaker 1: hit the jackpot. Yeah. In October four ninety one, Henriette A.

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Speaker 1: Lax dies. The same day this doctor Gay goes on

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Speaker 1: national television holding vial of HeLa cells and says, quote,

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Speaker 1: it is possible that from a fundamental study such as this,

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Speaker 1: we will be able to learn why a way in

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Speaker 1: which cancer can be completely wiped out. So the you know,

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Speaker 1: at this point, they don't care about Henrietta lacks, like

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Speaker 1: the whole thing of patient privacy and bioweapics that does

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Speaker 1: not exist in medical practice at the time. All they're

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Speaker 1: looking for is a way to use these cells that

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Speaker 1: are reproducing an incredible rate, to inject them with different

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Speaker 1: strains of cancer or inject them with different viruses, just

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Speaker 1: essentially to see how they operate. And because HeLa cells

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Speaker 1: are so incredibly vibrant and grow so much, they've become

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Speaker 1: used around the world for an insane amount of experiments

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Speaker 1: that lead to enormous breakthrough is one of the first

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Speaker 1: huge breakthroughs. For instance that HeLa cells were used for

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Speaker 1: was a polio vaccine. Yeah, incredible. Well, the family finally

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Speaker 1: gets involved twentysothing years later. They did not find out

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Speaker 1: that lacks of cells are being used all over the

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Speaker 1: world until nine, by which point the HeLa cells had

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Speaker 1: become standard reference cells and few molecular scientists hadn't worked

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Speaker 1: with them. So after gay success with the cells, all

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Speaker 1: of a sudden, culturing cells becomes suspiciously easy, and there's

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Speaker 1: this doctor who starts spreading what they just think is

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Speaker 1: a rumor at the time that Henrietta cells had basically

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Speaker 1: infected every other culture, and it turns out that they

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Speaker 1: kind of had. Her cells had traveled through the air

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Speaker 1: on hands or on the tips of pipe's overpowering any

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Speaker 1: cell cultures they encounter because all of a sudden, you know,

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Speaker 1: like Christen said earlier, it was so hard to keep

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Speaker 1: these cells alive in the lab, and now all of

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Speaker 1: a sudden, they're having a lot of luck with it.

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Speaker 1: And so basically to accept or reject this whole chaos theory,

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Speaker 1: they needed the family, and it just so happened that

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Speaker 1: the family had just learned about Henrietta cells being you know,

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Speaker 1: in labs and used around the world. So the family

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Speaker 1: had been calling Johns Hopkins. Nurses and doctors went to

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Speaker 1: the Lax family in Virginia gathered blood samples from the

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Speaker 1: children that would determine important information about Henrietta, like her

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Speaker 1: blood type that they could use to study her cells.

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Speaker 1: The family, however, thought they were being tested for cancer

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Speaker 1: for the same genes that Henrietta had, and the doctors

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Speaker 1: never got back to them about the tests. So this

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Speaker 1: is like ethics one oh one awful all around on

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Speaker 1: all sides. Yeah, and not to mention um. You know,

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Speaker 1: at this point the Lax family, uh still is not

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Speaker 1: wealthy by any means. Um. A lot of them couldn't

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Speaker 1: afford to even go to a doctor at that point,

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Speaker 1: Um and the hell of cells had made a lot

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Speaker 1: of people very rich because by that point the vials

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Speaker 1: of their mother's cells are being sold for twenty five

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Speaker 1: dollars a vile and um listen, listen to this quote.

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Speaker 1: One scientist estimates that if you could pile all the

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Speaker 1: HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, they'd weigh more

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Speaker 1: than fifty million metric tons, an inconceivable number given what

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Speaker 1: an individual cell weighs. Another scientists calculated that if you

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Speaker 1: could lay all HeLa cells ever grown into ind they'd

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Speaker 1: wrap around the Earth at least three times, spanning more

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Speaker 1: than three hundred and fifty million feet. And that is

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Speaker 1: coming from the book The Immortal Life of Henry Henrietta Lax,

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Speaker 1: written by Rebecca Sclute, who was a science writer who

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Speaker 1: spent ten years uncovering the mystery of HeLa cells and

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Speaker 1: trying to to speak to the Lax family about their mother,

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Speaker 1: find out what they could about who this woman was,

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Speaker 1: who essentially is responsible for an incredible number of medical breakthroughs.

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Speaker 1: But it took Sclute so long to even get in

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Speaker 1: contact with the Lax family because they felt that they

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Speaker 1: had been so taken advantage of by the medical community

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Speaker 1: and by other journalists who had come in and just

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Speaker 1: wanting to um kind of sensationalize the whole thing and

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Speaker 1: continue to to use them while they, you know, just

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Speaker 1: didn't didn't know. They had no idea that that there

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Speaker 1: that their mothers and their their wife, their grandmother's cells

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Speaker 1: had even been taken from her in the first place. Right, Yes,

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Speaker 1: sclutes book definitely won't help the portion of the public

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Speaker 1: who don't trust physicians and scientists already. Um Ruth Faden,

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Speaker 1: who's the executive director of the Johns Hopkins Bioethics Institute said,

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Speaker 1: and that this was in that Johns Hopkins magazine article

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Speaker 1: that Kristen mentioned, said that the story is a sad

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Speaker 1: commentary on how the biomedical research community thought about research

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Speaker 1: in the nineteen fifties. But she says it was not

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Speaker 1: at all uncommon for physicians to conduct research on patients

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Speaker 1: without their knowledge or consent, and even now, I mean

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Speaker 1: there are pieces of all of us kind of floating

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Speaker 1: around places. Well, it was so um uh eye opening

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Speaker 1: as well too when you when you think about the

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Speaker 1: mentality of where these doctors were coming from. They they

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Speaker 1: were it wasn't a bad thing that they were looking

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Speaker 1: for a cure for cancer, but a lot of times,

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Speaker 1: you know, maybe that pursuit of science overlooked the human

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Speaker 1: side of things. Um. The lab assistant Mary Cuba Sek,

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Speaker 1: who was the person who actually took the took a

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Speaker 1: sample from Henrietta Alax after she had died. Um She

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Speaker 1: says that she she walked in and saw Alex's corpse

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Speaker 1: and noticed red tonnail polish on her, and she told

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Speaker 1: Rebecca Scleute, who was that author of the Immortal Life

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Speaker 1: of Henrietta Alax. She told Scout that when I saw

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Speaker 1: those tonails, I nearly fainted and I thought, O ge

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Speaker 1: s She's a real person. And that's why the story

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Speaker 1: is so important, is because there is a a human

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Speaker 1: side to it. I mean. On on the plus side

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Speaker 1: of things is thanks to HeLa cells, we do have

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Speaker 1: the incredible ripple effect of things, including the modern field

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Speaker 1: of virology, biological supplies industry, blood type identification, genetic hybrids, cloning,

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Speaker 1: live cell transport, space biology. HeLa cells were the first

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Speaker 1: to go up in space nanotechnology, bio ethics, the HPV

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Speaker 1: vaccine um and speaking of ethics, Carolina in nineteen sixty six,

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Speaker 1: listen to this, after a scientist injects HeLa cells into

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Speaker 1: unwitting test subjects to see how cancer grows, a National

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Speaker 1: Institute of Health investigation leads to the institution of medical

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Speaker 1: review boards of for informed consent by patients. And that

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Speaker 1: came from Wired magazine, an infographic over there by Aaron

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Speaker 1: Biba talking about ethics and just the whole industry of

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Speaker 1: what has come out of basically is stealing too strong

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Speaker 1: word taking these women's cells without permission. UM In nineteen

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Speaker 1: fifty or uh, the for profit distribution of HeLa cells began.

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Speaker 1: That's also when the microbio Biological Associates begins mass producing

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Speaker 1: the cells. And nowadays it's big business. We have genetic medicine,

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Speaker 1: genomic science, and bioengineering that are becoming bit bigger fields.

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Speaker 1: And while John's Hopkins specifically has never sold licensed or

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Speaker 1: patented HeLa cells, a number of commercial firms do. UM

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Speaker 1: In that article, the Johns Hopkins magazine article that we

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Speaker 1: talked about. Uh. They point out that the term bio

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Speaker 1: bank has entered the lexicon. For instance, this is basically

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Speaker 1: a living database of human cells used for research, um

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Speaker 1: and they've been created, they're they're everywhere now, and they've

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Speaker 1: been created by a wide range of groups, everything from

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Speaker 1: disease advocacy groups to commercial research companies and academic centers

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Speaker 1: and back in so I'm sure it's even higher now.

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Speaker 1: But back in, the Rand Corporation estimated that there were

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Speaker 1: three hundred and seven point one million human tissue samples

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Speaker 1: stored in various repositories throughout the US well. And one

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Speaker 1: of the most controversial aspects of the Henriette lect story

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Speaker 1: is the fact that her cells profited so many people

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Speaker 1: in these these new biomedical industries that popped up, and

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Speaker 1: yet her family didn't benefit monetarily from it at all.

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Speaker 1: But at the same time, Uh, there's an article in

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Speaker 1: Johns Hopkins magazine about this, talking about how, uh you

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Speaker 1: get into very dice a territory when you open up

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Speaker 1: the potential for people to profit from their own cell

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Speaker 1: or their own tissue samples and donating their own like

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Speaker 1: say blood or organs or any you know, because then

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Speaker 1: you create a market, and then you might create a

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Speaker 1: difficult network where things might get backlogged because you have

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Speaker 1: to process payments and pay people and um. It seems

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Speaker 1: like the bigger issue is more a thing of patient

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Speaker 1: privacy and also how the Henrietta Lack story is just

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Speaker 1: one chapter as well in African American patients in particular

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Speaker 1: in the United States being taken advantage of by the

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Speaker 1: medical community. There are a number of dark chapters in that.

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Speaker 1: For instance, the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, which was initiated in

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Speaker 1: nineteen thirty two, which took place among four hundred men

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Speaker 1: who intentionally were not treated for cyphilis just to see

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Speaker 1: what would happen just among like four hundred black men.

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Speaker 1: And they were tartted because they were in a you know,

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Speaker 1: more vulnerable community who who wouldn't have had as much

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Speaker 1: of a say in things. Yeah, men wanted to researchers

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Speaker 1: wanted to observe how the disease progressed differently in black people.

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Speaker 1: In its late stages, the men were actually told they

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Speaker 1: were being treated for bad blood, but they never received treatments.

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Speaker 1: So not only are these men being exploited, but they

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Speaker 1: were also lied to and in nineteen seventy where there

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Speaker 1: was a ten million dollar settlement where the government agreed

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Speaker 1: to provide lifetime medical benefits and burial burial services to

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Speaker 1: all of the living participants. But that's not all. I mean,

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Speaker 1: it goes way back. We've talked about Jay Mary and

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Speaker 1: Sims in our gynecology episode, he did gynecological surgery and

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Speaker 1: experiments on enslaved black women. Uh. And in eighteen fifty five,

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Speaker 1: escaped slave John fed Brown recalled that the doctor to

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Speaker 1: whom he had been indentured actually produced blisters on his

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Speaker 1: body to see how deep my black skin went. So

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Speaker 1: there was just this idea of performing experiments and surgeries

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Speaker 1: on black people because they were the other. Yeah, they

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Speaker 1: weren't as valued as say a white patient. And um,

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Speaker 1: A lot of this is detailed in Henrietta Washington's book

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Speaker 1: Medical Apartheid. Um. She also talks about how, uh, black

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Speaker 1: Floridians in the early nineteen fifties were deliberately exposed to

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Speaker 1: storms of mosquitoes carrying allow fever and other diseases and

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Speaker 1: experiments conducted by the Army and the CIA. I mean,

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Speaker 1: it's it's horrific when you when you start to just

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Speaker 1: itemize these things. And in a way, the Henrietta Lax

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Speaker 1: story is far more benign because it was a tissue

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Speaker 1: sample that was being taken from you know, all the

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Speaker 1: patients who were coming in with cervical cancer at the time.

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Speaker 1: Um um and it but it just it speaks to

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Speaker 1: so many different things like privacy violations, not just the

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Speaker 1: money but also privacy violations. For instance, in nineteen seventy,

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Speaker 1: Science published a paper detailing an analysis of blood drawn

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Speaker 1: from Debora Lax was Henrietta's daughter, and forty three genetic

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Speaker 1: markers found in the lax Is DNA that could not

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Speaker 1: happen today that kind of information um would not be

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Speaker 1: would be illegal to publish. Well in the Lax family

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Speaker 1: was abused again because someone gave Henrietta's medical records to

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Speaker 1: journalist Michael Gold, who quoted them in his So yeah,

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Speaker 1: I just this family has been through a lot. And

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Speaker 1: you know you mentioned earlier the danger in the question

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Speaker 1: of payment for for these tissues and organs and cells,

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Speaker 1: and the ethicist argument is basically the common good model.

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Speaker 1: So no, we definitely shouldn't be paid for our tissues

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Speaker 1: because in their model the payoff is not in dollars,

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Speaker 1: but in better medicine in the future. So you don't

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Speaker 1: ate your blood now, you don't ate your tissues now,

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Speaker 1: and in the future will have better medical care. But

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Speaker 1: Fade and Ruth Faden, who we mentioned earlier, says that

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Speaker 1: there's a problem with that. She says that in the

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Speaker 1: absence of guaranteed access to a decent level of medical care,

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Speaker 1: the moral justification for that structure breaks down, and that yeah,

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Speaker 1: and and that medical care access is an important point

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Speaker 1: in the Lack story because one thing that Rebecca's sclute

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Speaker 1: brings up over and over again, not just in the book,

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Speaker 1: but in her interviews about the book um was how

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Speaker 1: the family had medical needs that they weren't able to

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Speaker 1: attend to. The reason why Henrietta Lax died so quickly

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Speaker 1: following her diagnosis of terminal cervical cancer was because she

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Speaker 1: could not even afford to go to the nearest charity hospital,

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Speaker 1: which was Johns Hopkins at the time. And so you

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Speaker 1: wonder if, uh, you know, what would happen if if

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Speaker 1: there were broader healthcare access for everyone. I mean, again

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Speaker 1: on the upside, like thanks to HeLa cells, we have

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Speaker 1: drugs for herpes leukemia, influenza, hemophilia, Parkinson's disease, et cetera.

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Speaker 1: But um, it's uh, there's so much attached to that

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Speaker 1: that we need to pay attention to. But the cool

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Speaker 1: thing about Rebecca Sclute, who you know really really took

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Speaker 1: this story and broadcast it to the world, is that

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Speaker 1: she and just write her book and say, oh, I

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Speaker 1: got a bestseller. This is fantastic my life school thanks

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Speaker 1: Lacks family, she um established the Henrietta Lacks Foundation to

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Speaker 1: at least pay some of it forward to the family. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And as of January nine, the foundation had awarded thirty

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Speaker 1: six grants to members of Henrietta Lacks's immediate family, twenty

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Speaker 1: three for tuition and books, eight for medical and dental aid,

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Speaker 1: and two for other emergency needs. And Sclute says that

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Speaker 1: she first envisioned the foundation as one for education, but

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Speaker 1: it's helped family members get a lot of other benefits,

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Speaker 1: and some of those are a high tech hearing aid

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Speaker 1: from one of Henrietta's sons, truck repairs for another, new

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Speaker 1: teeth for a granddaughter, braces for a great granddaughter, tuition,

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Speaker 1: books and fees for five grandchildren and great grandchildren, and

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Speaker 1: a granddaughter was able to study nursing UM. And on

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Speaker 1: February eighth, two thousand eleven, Virginia State lawmakers did pass

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Speaker 1: a resolution honoring Henrietta Lacks, and the statute says, um,

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Speaker 1: it's quote an honor of all who have ever faced

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Speaker 1: discrimination and exploitation and her amazing legacy which is altered

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Speaker 1: medical research and care and relieved the suffering of untold millions.

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Speaker 1: And people may be wondering what Johns Hopkins has done,

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Speaker 1: if anything, uh, to sort of you know, make amends

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Speaker 1: basically for what happened to Henrietta and her family. They

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Speaker 1: have established a lecture series in her name, a ten

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Speaker 1: thousand dollar a year scholarship for students from an East

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Speaker 1: Baltimore High school, and a fifteen thousand dollar annual award

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Speaker 1: for community health groups. And many people connected to Johns

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Speaker 1: Hopkins have privately supported the family. So while it um,

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Speaker 1: it's a distressing tale, certainly, um, but it does have

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Speaker 1: a brighter ending than the beginning. Say that, because as

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Speaker 1: much as the family was, you know, abused and lied to,

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Speaker 1: and as unfortunate as it was that they never got

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Speaker 1: permission to take the cells from Henrietta, the fact remains

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Speaker 1: that her cells have benefited science and medicine, and you

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Speaker 1: know in so many different experiments. We have so many

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Speaker 1: different medicines now because of her UM and again UM,

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Speaker 1: if you want to learn more about it, highly recommend

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Speaker 1: the book UM, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by

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Speaker 1: Rebecca Scalute. That's s K l o O T. And

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Speaker 1: if you've read the book or UM, if you have

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Speaker 1: any thoughts on the subject, of course, you can send

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Speaker 1: us an email Mom Stuff at Discovery dot com, and

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Speaker 1: we're going to get to a couple of your letters. Well,

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Speaker 1: we've got a couple of letters here for you about

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Speaker 1: mother's law. And the first one comes from Brad, who

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Speaker 1: kicks off his email by talking about how his wife

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Speaker 1: initially friend zoned him, which was funny, but guess what

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Speaker 1: now they're married, happy, ending to the friend zone story

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Speaker 1: see and friends that you can't get out of the

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Speaker 1: friend zone just goes to show, asked Brad, but he writes,

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Speaker 1: moving on to mother's in law, Mine is awesome. I

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Speaker 1: actually get along way better with her than with my

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Speaker 1: father in law, who's fine, just very said his way. Sometimes.

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Speaker 1: She's a librarian and very crafty, which works very well

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Speaker 1: with my love of reading and creating stuff. We live

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Speaker 1: across the country from her, and I actually wish that

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Speaker 1: they live closer so I could see her more than

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Speaker 1: once every year or two. My wife even jokes that

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Speaker 1: in a divorce, my in laws would take me and

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Speaker 1: let her go. I think that's adorable. Okay. I have

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Speaker 1: a slightly less adorable but still interesting letter from Liz

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Speaker 1: on mother in law's She says, I am blessed with

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Speaker 1: the marvelously sweet, kind and unobtrusive mother in law, while

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Speaker 1: my poor husband has a monster in law and the

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Speaker 1: person of my mother. She's meddlesome, opinionated, and any time

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Speaker 1: we visit, she orders him around like her own personal houseboy.

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Speaker 1: She's also incredibly clingy, resenting it if on our visits

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Speaker 1: we attempt to spend even a few minutes absorbed in

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Speaker 1: private tasks like reading, or if we try to go

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Speaker 1: out for a drink at night without her. My husband

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Speaker 1: once said to me that your mother is what God

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Speaker 1: had in mind when he created mothers in law. My

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Speaker 1: mother has been divorced from my father for fifteen years

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Speaker 1: and hasn't had any relationships since. My husband's parents, on

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Speaker 1: the other hand, were high school sweethearts and say that

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Speaker 1: they are more in love now than they ever have been.

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Speaker 1: So I wonder if the flavor of one's mother or

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Speaker 1: a monster in lawness, is it all related to one's

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Speaker 1: happiness in their own relationships. Perhaps mothers in law who

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Speaker 1: are satisfied in their own marriages don't find the need

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Speaker 1: to dissect or butt into their children's marriages. Mothers in

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Speaker 1: law who are not in happy relationships perhaps see their

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Speaker 1: children's relationships as a way to have a do over.

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Speaker 1: I'd be curious to know if anyone else has experienced

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Speaker 1: something similar, So y'all should write into our Facebook page

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Speaker 1: and tell Liz if you have had similar experiences. I

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Speaker 1: have a feeling there's some there's some meat to that theory?

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Speaker 1: Is meat to that theories? Phrase? Maybe I feel like

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Speaker 1: there's a pork chop curiot there sounds delicious. Well, while

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Speaker 1: I'm busy making up nonexistent phrases, you can feel free

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Speaker 1: to write us a letter mom Stuff and Discovery dot com,

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00:23:12,040 --> 00:23:14,360
Speaker 1: or send us a message on Facebook like us stare.

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00:23:14,400 --> 00:23:16,440
Speaker 1: While you're at it, you can follow us on Twitter

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Speaker 1: at mom Stuff Podcast. You can even follow us on

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Speaker 1: Tumbler at stuff. I've never told you dot tumbler dot com.

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Speaker 1: And if you want to learn more about Henrietta Lacksta

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Speaker 1: cells HeLa cells, you can read how HeLa cells Work

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Speaker 1: at our website, it's how stuff works dot com. For

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Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics, is it

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Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com