Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks - Book Report/Review Example

IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS Part I: The of this book is Henrietta Lacks, a poor African American woman who hails from a tobacco-growing neighborhood. She is affected with cancer. It all started when Henrietta Lacks went to the Johns Hopkins University hospital to examine a “knot on her womb” that had given her pain for the last year. Dr. Howard Jones took a sample of a shiny, nickel-sized purple lump on Henrietta’s cervix and sent it to the lab for testing. He noted that there had been no abnormalities observed four months earlier when she had delivered a baby, nor when she had come in for a follow-up six weeks later. The surgeon operated on her, and then removed two samples from her cervix, one from the cervical cancer tissue, and another from the healthy tissue nearby. He packed the tissue with radium to kill the cancer cells, and sent the samples to Dr. Gey, head of tissue culture research at John Hopkins University Hospital. This research was important to Dr. Gey- he was involved in research to develop immortal cells for research and had obtained numerous other samples from surgeries. However, Henrietta Lacks’ cells proved unordinary and provided a promise of success when they started to grow successful. He then gives samples of these cells to hi other colleagues (Skloot, 2011). In spite of this huge success using her cells, Henrietta Lacks remains uninformed about it, neither are her children. The cells are however, sold to research laboratories around the world, to be used in medical research. The sale of these cells, and generally the commercialization of human tissue obtained from clients, is a subject of great controversy and is the issue that informs the intention of this book. Part II: Research title: CLONAL GROWTH OF MAMMALIAN CELLS IN VITRO GROWTH CHARACTERISTICS OF COLONIES FROM SINGLE HELA CELLS WITH AND WITHOUT A FEEDER LAYER This study investigated the propriety of use of HeLa cells in routine growth of animal cells in vitro. It is a requirement that the growth of animal cells demands the use of large number of cells so that multiplication can be initiated and sustained. For a long time, the requirement of a large population of cells had prevented the use of certain techniques that are usually used in studying cellular growth, genetic biochemistry and genetics in microorganisms. Due to that there were fundamental questions which were raised, for example, whether somatic cells were significantly variable from independent micro-organisms like the bacteria in the distribution of reproductive potential in the members of the cell-line population. This study described a method for growing for growing colonies of HeLa cells. HeLa cells are simply human epithelium cells that have been cultured from cervical cancer. Essentially the procedure rapid and simple, and allows the screening of large numbers of cells for both physiologic and genetic studies. The study is quantitative in the sense that each single HeLa cell forms a colony. Further methodological techniques represented and some of the features of the resultant clonal population are described. There are two methods which were described in the study for the simple and rapid plating of the HeLa cells. The human carcinomatous cells have been described. Colonies grew from each single cell. There was irradiation in one of the procedures so that the feeder cells were made to un-multiply to condition the medium. In the other, the cells were handle more gently, but were virtually similar to those that were used in plating bacteria on semi-solid media. The results were such that when represented on the growth curves, the developing colonies were observed to be highly reproducible. The mutant stocks which showed most activity isolated from the study showed a generation of between 18 and 20 hours. The HeLa cells can assume a highly stretched, amoeboid form with marked motility when pooled in the human sera. However, in non-human media, the same cells assume a tightly packed, epithelial-like, columnar morphology. The two cells have volumes, plating efficiencies, nuclear cross sections which are no greater than found within the limits of experimental error. However, they show different cross-sectional areas, which showed that the basic change occurred in the surface of the cell. It is thus reasoned that the change described above has a relation with that which enables compact tumor cells to be invasive. Animal cells which have been subjected to the standard procedures for typsinization involving repeated washings and mechanical trauma in incomplete media usually leak huge amounts of P an suffer inability to proliferate as isolated cells. The methods of application which were described in the study were meant for quantitative study of mammalian cell growth, genetics, physiology and biochemistry. The response to drugs, high irradiation energy, viruses and the response to other agents have been indicated. This also enlarged the scope of genetic investigations on the somatic cells of mammals. The real genetic contribution of the study is that it allows for the screening of large populations so that rare mutants can be isolated and development of new strains achieved. No manipulation of the individual cells would be necessary and in this way, it is made easier to find the mutant characters and to achieve quantitative study of natural and artificially induced reproduction rates for genetic characters which are stable and do not have susceptibility by those methods that required handling of each individual cells. As such the procedures which have been developed in the study of microbiological systems for gene chemistry studies and also neoclassical genetic studies would be made applicable in the studies of animal cells too. In conclusion, this study is helpful to humanity because it provides a window through which scientific medical investigations using animal cells can be achieved. This will go a long way in establishing experiments which involve mammalian cells in diverse medical fields, such as biochemistry, physiology, histology, microscopic anatomy, and other areas too. Part III: Though HeLa cells have been very pivotal, and even revolutionary in the field of medical research, and we appreciate the attempts which have neem made in order to ensure that milestones that were hitherto unprecedented in medical research have been scaled, ethical issues concerning the HeLa cells remain. Looking at the pros, benefits of using the HeLa cells, as already pointed include the advantage to researchers in finally obtaining cell lines whose life out-spanned that of normal human cells. Attempts to develop immortal cells had eluded scientists for years, and claims by certain researchers much earlier that they had managed to develop immortal cell lines were later found to be untrue. The ability to finally find cells which are immortal meant that it was now possible to perform certain research studies in biochemistry, physiology, genetics and histology without worrying about the age of the cells, which would in effect fail the outcome of the experiments. Indeed several studies have been successfully performed using these cells, and new discoveries made. Medical research using HeLa cells have also been achieved at zero gravity, samples being taken to outer space so that experiments could be conducted under special conditions. As such discoveries such as the development of polio vaccine have resulted, a breakthrough in medical research which has saved millions of children from vulnerability to polio ( Landecker, 2000). Yet, concerns have been raised. Firstly, the commercial distribution of the cells has been is an issue which to a large extent is unethical. It is known that the cells were obtained from a subject for free and without her knowledge. The fact that there was no explanation to the family the medical value of their mother’s killer cells left the family feeling used and abused( Hagerty, 2011). Secondly, the families members subsequently went to the hospital and gave blood, thinking they were being tested for cancer, yet the samples were later known to be used to find out the possibility of contamination of other cultures by Lacks cells. Later when Pallum Lacks asked a top geneticist in the hospital, she gave her a copy of a textbook that detailed the investigations using the HeLa cells. The autographed copy had a signature and the number of Deborah Lacks, to be used for further communication in case of need for further blood donations. This was unethical(ibid). Owing to increasing controversy surrounding the use of human tissues in doing human research, I think it would be useful if subjects from whom samples are taken would be treated with greater dignity and their contribution respected. For example, when samples are found to be helpful in medical research, the subjects or their family members should be informed. In addition to mere information, the subjects or families should receive special medical attention or clearing their medical bills. References Haggerty, C. ( 2011). The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Journal of Catholic Bioethics, 6, (1). St. Josephs Landecker, H.,(2000). Immortality, In Vitro: A History of the HeLa Cell Line, Indiana University Press Skloot, R. (2011). ‘’The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks’’, Broadway: NY Read More