the immortal life of henrietta lacks answer key

In August last year, UK based firm Abcam became the first ever biotechnology company to make a donation to the Henrietta Lacks Foundation that has used HeLa cells in its research. The Foundation has given grants not only to Lacks’ descendants, but to family members of the unwitting participants in the Tuskegee syphilis studies and the human radiation experiments, among others. Reparations are opening up new conversationsĮstablished by Rebecca Skloot, a science writer whose 2010 book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks brought Lacks’ story into the mainstream, the foundation provides financial assistance to people who were involved in historic scientific research without their knowledge, consent or benefit and their descendants. While diagnosing her disease, doctors at Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins Hospital gave a biopsy of her cancerous cells to Dr George Otto Gey, a cell biologist based at the hospital’s medical school. The name HeLa refers to the initials of Henrietta Lacks, a poor, Black woman who died of cervical cancer aged 31 in 1951.

They’ve helped develop treatments for Parkinson’s disease and haemophilia, establish methods of freezing cells for storage and discover the telomerase enzyme that contributes to aging and death.īut the story behind these cells is one steeped in racial inequality. HeLa cells have formed the foundation of clinical trials to treat and cure cancer, contributed to space travel research and allowed researchers to identify the number of human chromosomes. HeLa cells are the most widely used human cell line in biological research, and for almost 70 years they have played a central role in many of mankind’s most significant biomedical breakthroughs – the cells were used in 1954 to develop the polio vaccine, in the 1980s to identify and understand the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and even in research for vaccines against Covid-19.

The immortal life of henrietta lacks answer key