Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey brain Stuff
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogelbaum here. In February of nineteen fifty one, a
Speaker 1: young black woman by the name of Henrietta Lax, thirty
Speaker 1: years old and the mother of five, was diagnosed with
Speaker 1: cervical cancer. Her doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital biopsied the
Speaker 1: tumor and took samples of the cells to use in
Speaker 1: their research. They were amazed to find that, unlike the
Speaker 1: other cells they'd studied, which would die after dividing a
Speaker 1: few times in a test tube, some of Lax cells
Speaker 1: kept growing. This became the world's first cell line, a
Speaker 1: population of cells taken from a person and grown in vitro,
Speaker 1: that is, in labs to be used for scientific research.
Speaker 1: Cell Lines are often named after the people from whom
Speaker 1: they were originally derived, so Henrietta Lax are known as
Speaker 1: HeLa cells. Cell Lines are used in all kinds of ways,
Speaker 1: like studying the effects of diseases and developed medications and vaccines.
Speaker 1: They play an invaluable role in medicine today. LAX's cervical
Speaker 1: cancer was aggressive, it metastasized, and she died later that year.
Speaker 1: In October of nineteen fifty one, but almost seventy five
Speaker 1: years later, her cells, billions upon billions of them, live
Speaker 1: on in laboratories all over the world. It's still one
Speaker 1: of the most, if not the most commonly used cell line,
Speaker 1: and it's known to be extremely resilient. The thing is,
Speaker 1: Lax didn't give permission for her tissue to be used
Speaker 1: for research. She wasn't even informed about it. Neither was
Speaker 1: her family. And while her cells have gone on to
Speaker 1: produce groundbreaking medical research and thereby earn a lot of
Speaker 1: money for biotechnology companies, her family didn't even know for
Speaker 1: twenty five years and didn't see a single cent for
Speaker 1: a lot longer than that. LAX's story isn't just about
Speaker 1: her contribution to medicine. It's about the ethics of biomedical
Speaker 1: research and the practice of informed consent. So today let's
Speaker 1: talk about all of that, But let's start at the
Speaker 1: beginning with Lax herself. Henrietta Lax was a young African
Speaker 1: American woman from Virginia who'd grown up in tobacco farming communities. Later,
Speaker 1: she lived with her husband and their children outside of Baltimore, Maryland,
Speaker 1: in the historically black community of Turner Station. There She
Speaker 1: was the center of a home, welcoming of extended family
Speaker 1: and anyone in need. Lax loved to cook, including a
Speaker 1: favorite spaghetti. She liked to dress sharp and favored red
Speaker 1: nail polish. She also loved dancing, including with her kids.
Speaker 1: While pregnant with their fifth child, she felt unknot in
Speaker 1: her abdomen. After childbirth, Lax experienced abnormal bleeding. Her doctor
Speaker 1: discovered a lump on her cervix and sent a sample
Speaker 1: of it to a lab, resulting in her cancer diagnosis.
Speaker 1: The only hospital in the area that would treat black
Speaker 1: patients was Johns Hopkins, so that's where she went for
Speaker 1: radiation treatments. This was a relatively new field and at
Speaker 1: the time involved inserting tubes of radium around the cervix
Speaker 1: and sewing them into place, along with X ray treatments,
Speaker 1: but the cancer still spread. Lax died in the hospital
Speaker 1: at the age of thirty one, just nine months after
Speaker 1: her diagnosis. During her treatments, lax doctor removed some tissue
Speaker 1: samples from her cervical tumor. She'd signed the usual forms
Speaker 1: consenting to treatment for cancer, but wasn't asked for her
Speaker 1: permission to remove the tissue. Samples, nor was she informed
Speaker 1: that it had been done afterward. This was standard procedure
Speaker 1: at the time it was completely legal. The tissue was
Speaker 1: sent to one doctor, George Guy, in the Johns Hopkins
Speaker 1: Tissue Culture laboratory. Doctor Guy had been trying and failing
Speaker 1: to grow human cells in the lab for years, but
Speaker 1: he isolated one of lax cells and got it to divide,
Speaker 1: and it just kept going. He named the line HeLa.
Speaker 1: Its first use was fittingly in cancer research. Normally, all
Speaker 1: of the cells in the human body experience the effects
Speaker 1: of aging over time, known as cellular's essence. Repeated divisions
Speaker 1: cause the cell's DNA to become unstable, meaning that eventually
Speaker 1: the cell is unable to replicate and it dies. This
Speaker 1: is called programmed cell death or apoptosis, and it varies
Speaker 1: depending on the type of cell. Apoptosis can be a
Speaker 1: good thing. It's how fingers and toes are formed in uterobe.
Speaker 1: Human fetuses start out with web dependages that separate thanks
Speaker 1: to programmed cell death. It's also how our immune system
Speaker 1: kills off cells that are infected by viruses. Too much.
Speaker 1: Apoptosis can cause tissue damage and lead to disease, but
Speaker 1: so can too little. For example, if cells grow out
Speaker 1: of control, they can become cancerous. In a laboratory setting,
Speaker 1: apoptosis generally occurs after about fifty cell divisions, but under
Speaker 1: the right conditions, HeLa cells divide indefinitely. Remember that HeLa
Speaker 1: cells were grown from tumor tissue. Cancer cells don't go
Speaker 1: through apoptosis with the regularity that normal cells do, and
Speaker 1: Lack cells were especially hardy. Just as the cancer grew
Speaker 1: and spread quickly throughout Lack's body, HeLa cells grow and
Speaker 1: spread quickly in vitro. Nobody knows quite why doctor Guy
Speaker 1: and Johns Hopkins didn't seek to profit off of the
Speaker 1: HeLa line. They provided samples for free. Now HeLa cells
Speaker 1: are used around the world. There are over sixty thousand
Speaker 1: medical journal articles about them and some eleven thousand patents
Speaker 1: related to their use. There are thousands of other cell lines,
Speaker 1: but HeLa remains popular because it's easy to grow, store,
Speaker 1: and ship. The heartiness and popularity of HeLa cells has
Speaker 1: actually led to a problem contamination. Some recentatures even think
Speaker 1: of the cells as a weed. They're difficult to get
Speaker 1: rid of and can overwhelm other cell lines and ruin research,
Speaker 1: but their resilience is what's made them such an incredible tool.
Speaker 1: The helo cell line has helped found entire fields of study.
Speaker 1: Researchers essentially created the field of virology the study of
Speaker 1: viruses after infecting helo cells with measles or mumps so
Speaker 1: that they could observe how the viruses affected the cells.
Speaker 1: This led to the creation of some of the vaccines
Speaker 1: in use today, and recently, helo cells were used in
Speaker 1: the formulation of COVID nineteen vaccines. Genetic medicine got its
Speaker 1: start in the nineteen fifties when researchers discovered that helo
Speaker 1: cell's chromosomes were visible when treated with this specific stain,
Speaker 1: which led to the discovery of our typical twenty three
Speaker 1: pairs of chromosomes. In the mid nineteen sixties, HeLa cells
Speaker 1: helped researchers begin the process of mapping the human genome.
Speaker 1: Polio has been eradicated in the Western hemisphere thanks to
Speaker 1: Jonas Sulk and the vaccine that he tested using helo cell.
Speaker 1: The line has also been instrumental in studying tuberculosis, HIV,
Speaker 1: and human papillomavirus or HPV, which is usually what causes
Speaker 1: cervical cancer and which eventually resulted in a vaccine. HeLa
Speaker 1: cells were used to improve in vitro fertilization techniques, to
Speaker 1: test medications for cancer in Parkinson's, to observe the effects
Speaker 1: of radiation and toxins, and to test the safety of
Speaker 1: products like cosmetics, tape, and glue. It's estimated that over
Speaker 1: fifty million metric tons of HeLa cells have been grown
Speaker 1: since her unwitting donation. That lack of consent to her
Speaker 1: cells being taken and used for research has become a
Speaker 1: central example in the field of ethics in biomedical research.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until the early nineteen seventies that Lack's family
Speaker 1: got an inkling of her legacy. Her widowed husband got
Speaker 1: a confusing call from a researcher at Johns Hopkins Hospital.
Speaker 1: He thought they were saying that they needed to test
Speaker 1: their children to find out if they also had cancer.
Speaker 1: The kids submitted to testing, but were never contacted about
Speaker 1: the results. It wasn't done for them, but to better
Speaker 1: understand Henriette's genetics. The first time the family better understood
Speaker 1: the cells continued existence was after an article about the
Speaker 1: HILA line ran in Rolling Stone in nineteen seventy six,
Speaker 1: a doctor Guy and Johns Hopkins didn't profit off of HeLa,
Speaker 1: but related products have been sold since nineteen fifty four.
Speaker 1: For decades, doctors and researchers failed to ask for the
Speaker 1: family's consent before publishing lax medical records and even a
Speaker 1: genome from one group of her cells. Amidst ethical controversy,
Speaker 1: it was taken offline and some rights were then acknowledged
Speaker 1: to the family. In twenty thirteen, they granted permission for
Speaker 1: another genome based on the HILA line to be published.
Speaker 1: Until twenty twenty three. The Lax family received no compensation
Speaker 1: for Henriette's world changing contribution, nor for the breach of
Speaker 1: their privacy. That compensation was the result of a lawsuit
Speaker 1: against biotechnology company thermofish or Scientific Ink. They claimed the
Speaker 1: company had lined their pockets for decades, even after Lack's
Speaker 1: identity was known. They pointed out that the company had
Speaker 1: given millions to their CEO while Black's surviving family was
Speaker 1: unable to afford health insurance. The company wound up settling
Speaker 1: with them for a confidential amount. This story also touches
Speaker 1: on the exploitation of minority groups as test subjects, including
Speaker 1: people who can't afford healthcare, and people of color, and
Speaker 1: in the US, especially the black community. The argument from
Speaker 1: the medical community has long been that once blood or
Speaker 1: tissues are removed from you, they're not really yours anymore.
Speaker 1: They say it would slow or stymy life saving research,
Speaker 1: that it would be far too complicated and costly to
Speaker 1: have to track the identities behind every sample and pay
Speaker 1: if there's some monetary gain. American courts have sided with
Speaker 1: researchers so far, but they've also upheld the necessity of
Speaker 1: patients in fum formed consent. However, one hundred and five
Speaker 1: years after her birth and seventy four years into her
Speaker 1: cell lines existence, Henrietta Lax has finally gotten some recognition. JOHNS.
Speaker 1: Hopkins has named a building for her and established a
Speaker 1: memorial award in her name. She's been commemorated by organizations
Speaker 1: like the Moorhouse College of Medicine, the Smithsonian, and the
Speaker 1: World Health Organization. In twenty ten, a science writer by
Speaker 1: the name of Rebecca Sclute published a best selling book
Speaker 1: called The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lax, which HBO made
Speaker 1: into a movie in twenty seventeen, featuring Oprah Winfrey playing
Speaker 1: Henriette's daughter, and in twenty ten, a headstone was finally
Speaker 1: placed at las previously unmarked grave. Sclute also created the
Speaker 1: Henriette Lax Foundation to educate people about Lax and to
Speaker 1: help her family and others like hers with expenses for
Speaker 1: education and health care. Today, a number of laboratories that
Speaker 1: use HeLa Cell's make donations to the foundation. Today's episode
Speaker 1: is based on the article how HeLa Sells works on
Speaker 1: how stuffworks dot Com, written by Shanna Freeman. Brain Stuff
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