The New Health Dialogue

Here's a book we plan on reading -- learned about it from a review in this weekend's Washington Post. It's called The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. She was a poor black woman from Baltimore, diagnosed with cervical cancer in 1951 at age 31. (The review didn't mention it, but we learned elsewhere that she died a few months later.) Johns Hopkins, the only hospital around at the time that treated black patients, treated her as a charity case. But not before taking two “dime-size pieces of tissue, one cancerous and one healthy,” from her cervix, without her permission or her knowledge. That tissue became one of the most successful cell lines ever in biomedical research, known as HeLa, an abbreviation of her name. The cells were used and are still being used to research cancer and numerous other conditions and diseases. Some 60,000 different studies have already been done -- some by for-profit corporations.

Scientists grew cells in mass quantities to test the new polio vaccine. Soon a commercial enterprise was growing batches for large-scale use. Discoveries piled up. HeLa led to the understanding that normal human cells have 46 chromosomes. NASA launched HeLa into orbit to test how human cells behave in zero-gravity. The cells, in turn, helped launch virology as a field and shot medical research forward like a rocket.

No surprise, Lacks' family didn't benefit. For most of the last 60 years, they haven't even been able to afford a doctor. Her youngest daughter Deborah said, “If our mother's cells done so much for medicine, how come her family can't afford to see no doctors?" Her cousin Cootie added: "Nobody round here never understood how she dead and that thing still livin. That's where the mystery's at."

Maybe we should order 535 copies for the folks in Congress. Maybe they would get inspired to make sure health reform lives another 60 years ...