Page 59 - All About History - Issue 53-17

Hero or Villain?
GEORGE OTTO GEY

Johns Hopkins Hospital, Henrietta Lacks’s
Baltimore, where Henrietta story has been told
Lacks was treated in book and film

Defining
moment
The family find out
A chance conversation alerts the Lacks
family to Henrietta’s immortal cells thanks
to their codename — HeLa, from the donor’s Today, there are thousands of
first and last names. They are approached by immortal cell lines but patients are
scientists for blood samples and by journalists asked for permission before tissue is
for stories. As they fight for the right to have taken for research
Henrietta’s contribution recognised, their
story is collected and told by Rebecca
Europe and the United Skloot in her bestselling book, she could feel a knot in code made from the first two letters of the patient’s
States, killing thousands The Immortal Life Of her body. Her name was first and last name. Henrietta’s cells were called
and leaving many more with Henrietta Lacks. Henrietta Lacks, and she ‘HeLa’, and her son’s neighbour was a scientist. He
1975
lifelong paralysis. A vaccine had not long given birth to her recognised the family surname.
could save lives, but it needed to youngest son. At around the same time, they started receiving
be tested on human cells before it could Henrietta had travelled 32 kilometres phone calls from researchers interested in their
be trialled in people. George’s lab had created in the rain with five young children in tow genes, and from writers interested in their story.
the solution. Mountains of human cells could be because no other hospital in the area would see Henrietta’s tissue had been taken without her
produced virtually from thin air and, in under a African-American patients. Her husband, David, consent and shared without her knowledge, and
year, the vaccine had been checked. By the 1960s, was a steelworker, and she a homemaker, the her genes and medical information were now the
cases of polio in the US had plummeted. granddaughter of a tobacco farmer from Virginia. subject of worldwide scrutiny. Suddenly, the Lacks
The cells went on to be used in the development Her family waited in the car as she was told that family discovered the monumental impact of her
of more vaccines and to examine other infectious she had cancer. involuntary gift.
diseases. They allowed scientists to explore how A biopsy was taken of her tumour before her Henrietta’s descendants have had to battle for the
cells grow, divide and die and, as George had treatment began. At the time, there were no rules right to privacy and recognition, but the scientist
hoped, they began to give up cancer’s secrets, about what could happen to the spare tissue, and it himself wasn’t around to explain — he died of
leading to the development of new treatments. was handed to George Gey without her permission. cancer in November 1970, aged 71. One of his last
They were the first human cells grown in space, He took it to his lab technician and she went back wishes was that his own tumour be immortalised
and they led to two Nobel Prizes. More than 60 to her family. He watched in wonder as her cells as Henrietta’s had been all those years before, but
years later, they are still growing. took over his glass tubes, while her family watched his request went unfulfilled. Their joint legacy,
Over 90,000 scientific papers have been in pain as the cancer took over her body. She died however, lives on.
published as a result of George and Margaret’s on 4 October 1951 and her relatives had no idea that
pioneering work, but behind the breakthroughs part of her lived on. Was George Gey a hero or a villain? Let us
was an untold secret. In February 1951, a 31-year-old Over 20 years later, the wife of her eldest son know what you think © Alamy, Wellcome Images, Getty Images
woman made the trip to Johns Hopkins Hospital sat down for dinner with a neighbour; a chance
with her family. She sat in the doctor’s office encounter that finally revealed the truth. When Facebook Twitter
and explained that she had been bleeding and George took samples into his lab, he gave them a /AllAboutHistory @AboutHistoryMag
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