Page 56 - All About History - Issue 53-17

HERO
HERO

VILLAIN?
VILLAIN?
OR

George

Otto Gey

The scientist who changed biomedical research
by immortalising a woman without

her knowledge

Written by Laura Mears
here were no drugs for cancer in the 1920s. Cancer cells grow in clusters, supported by
It was the knife or radiation, and the outlook a network of crisscrossed fibres riddled with
for patients was bleak. George Gey knew blood vessels. The cells are used to constant
this when he took up a post directing the temperatures, an unending supply of nutrients,
TTissue Culture Laboratory at Johns Hopkins and a rich flow of oxygen. The body removes
University in 1923, and he was determined to make waste, sends nurturing growth signals, and clears
a change. debris. George wanted to take all of that away and
He was a gentle giant. A weekend fisherman put living tumours in specimen jars so that their Defining
with a penchant for scrapheap diving and a talent biology could be dissected.
for inventing. Hidden away in an old janitor’s office He made his test tubes by hand, blowing moment
with his wife Margaret, he dreamed of growing the glass himself. They needed to be washed Move to Johns Hopkins
cancer cells outside of the body so that he could between uses, so he stockpiled an entire After completing a Bachelor of Science
degree at the University of Pittsburgh,
poke and prod them until they spat out the recipe shipping container of gentle soap that George Otto Gey sets up his laboratory at
for a possible cure. wouldn’t leave a residue toxic to the cells. For Johns Hopkins University. From their base in a
Normal cells die after reproducing 40 or 50 nutrients, George and his wife concocted a converted office, he and his wife spend decades
tinkering with the complex and challenging
times, but cancer cells divide without limits, blood surrogate using a strange mixture of science of cell culture, perfecting the
growing and growing to form a tumour that raw materials. The broth would bathe the cells, techniques and equipment needed to
eventually breaks apart at the edges, seeding the supplying food and oxygen and drawing grow cells outside of the body as they
try to find a long-awaited cure
body with endlessly replicating lumps and nodules. out waste. for cancer.
In theory, they should be immortal, if only George The basis of the elixir was blood harvested from 1923
could get them to grow — but it was an impossible fresh placenta. It could be stripped of cells to leave
dream. Human cells, even cancerous ones, didn’t behind a straw-coloured liquid full of nutrients and
survive in tubes. salts, and there was a ready supply of discarded
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