Did Henrietta Lacks Family Benefit From Her Cell Research?
Henrietta Lacks, Whose Cells Were Taken Without Her Consent, Is Honored by Due west.H.O.
In a anniversary in Geneva, the World Health Organization presented an award to the family of Ms. Lacks, whose cancer cells led to world-changing advances in medical and scientific research.
In 1951, Henrietta Lacks, a Black mother of 5 who was dying of cervical cancer, went to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore for treatment.
Without her knowledge or consent, doctors removed a sample of cells from the tumor in her cervix. They gave the sample to a researcher at Johns Hopkins University who was trying to find cells that would survive indefinitely then researchers could experiment on them.
The invasive procedure led to a earth-irresolute discovery: The cells thrived and multiplied in the laboratory, something no human being cells had done before. They were reproduced billions of times, contributed to nearly 75,000 studies and helped pave the style for the HPV vaccine, medications used to aid patients with H.I.5. and AIDS and, recently, the evolution of Covid-19 vaccines.
On Wednesday, 70 years after Ms. Lacks died in the "colored ward" at Johns Hopkins Hospital and was buried in an unmarked grave, the Globe Health Organization honored the contribution she unknowingly made to science and medicine.
During a ceremony in Geneva, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the W.H.O., presented the Managing director General Award to Ms. Lacks's son Lawrence Lacks, who was 16 when his female parent died on Oct. four, 1951.
Victoria Baptiste, Ms. Lacks's keen-granddaughter, said the family was "humbled" past the presentation and the acknowledgment of the legacy of "a Black woman from the tobacco fields of Clover, Virginia."
"Henrietta'due south contributions, once subconscious, are now being rightfully honored for their global bear on," Ms. Baptiste, a registered nurse, said.
Soumya Swaminathan, the main scientist at the W.H.O., said near fifty 1000000 metric tons of the cells, known as HeLa cells, have been used past researchers and scientists around the globe.
"This is but enormous, when y'all recollect well-nigh it," Dr. Swaminathan said. "I cannot call back of whatever other single prison cell line or lab reagent that'due south been used to this extent and has resulted in then many advances."
Ms. Lacks moved from Virginia to Baltimore with her husband, David Lacks, during the 1940s, looking for improve opportunities for her family unit, according to the Henrietta Lacks Initiative, an organization founded past her grandchildren.
She went to Johns Hopkins for help after she experienced severe vaginal bleeding. The sample of cells were taken during a biopsy, according to Johns Hopkins. She was 31 when she died, viii months later she learned she had cervical cancer.
Neither she nor her family unit were told that tissue samples from her tumor had been given to Dr. George Gey, a Johns Hopkins medical researcher.
The cells derived from the sample were uniquely resilient, doubling every 24 hours and managing to grow successfully outside the human being body for more than than 36 hours, according to the Henrietta Lacks Initiative.
The breakthrough thrilled scientists and researchers who used them to develop a polio vaccine and produce drugs for other diseases, including Parkinson's, leukemia and the flu.
But Ms. Lacks's identity remained hidden past researchers. Her family did non discover out about the use of her cells until 1973, when scientists chosen them for blood samples so they could report their genes, co-ordinate to "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks," a all-time-selling book by Rebecca Skloot that was also turned into a film with Oprah Winfrey.
Ms. Lacks's descendants have expressed pride in what her cells take gone on to achieve, but as well fury over how she was treated by doctors. That fury has only been compounded past the commercialization of her cells.
Dr. Gey, who studied Ms. Lacks's tissue, did not profit off his research. Just over the decades, biotech companies have commercialized the cells and sold them even as Ms. Lacks's family never received whatsoever compensation.
"Fortunes have been made," Dr. Tedros said on Midweek. "Science has avant-garde. Nobel Prizes accept been won and well-nigh importantly, many lives have been saved."
"No doubt Henrietta would have been pleased that her suffering has saved others," he connected. "Just the end doesn't justify the means."
On October. iv, her descendants sued Thermo Fisher Scientific, a biotechnology company that they defendant "of making a conscious choice to sell and mass produce the living tissue of Henrietta Lacks," according to the federal lawsuit.
The family unit said information technology was enervating that Thermo Fisher pay $nine.9 1000000 and "disgorge the total corporeality of its net profits obtained past commercializing the HeLa cell line" to Ms. Lacks's estate.
During a news conference, Christopher Seeger, a lawyer for the family, suggested that more than biotech companies could be sued.
Thermo Fisher "shouldn't experience also lone, considering they're going to have a lot of company very soon," Mr. Seeger said.
Thermo Fisher, which is based in Waltham, Mass., did not immediately respond to a message seeking annotate.
Dr. Tedros said on Wednesday that the injustice that began with the removal of Ms. Lacks'southward cells had continued. He noted, for example, that the vaccines that help prevent cervical cancer and guard against Covid-19 remain inaccessible to poor countries.
Another speaker, Groesbeck Parham, a co-chair of the managing director general's expert group on cervical cancer elimination, said that the about effective fashion to recognize Ms. Lacks's contribution would exist to cease inequities in health and scientific discipline.
He said, "It is in this way that we truly honor Mrs. Henrietta Lacks and immortalize her miracle."
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/13/science/henrietta-lacks-cells-who.html
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