Henrietta Lacks

Henrietta Lacks (1920 - 1951) died into 1951 of a cancerous tumor with very fast development. Its cells are the first to have been able to be cultivated In vitro (after death of interested and thus without its assent) and for this reason were dispatched in the whole world under the name of line HeLa . It is estimated that the number of currently alive HeLa cells represents a biomass more important than that of the cells of Henriette Lacks of alive sound.

His/her children learned only tardily this operation, and expressed their disapproval publicly that the service returned Post-mortem with science by their mother was not even worth in return a decent burial to him.

Notice

In the years which followed the forwarding of HeLa cells at various laboratories of the world, much of those managed to establish in vitro lines of cells of other cancers (lung, throat, liver…), whereas this operation failed up to that point. It proved thereafter that these cellular lines, lately established, were contaminated by HeLa cells (following handling errors), and had finally succeeded in taking the top while proliferating better and more quickly than the original cells. It is a frequent error in cellular Culture simply due to a lack of rigor.

Bonds

Contamination HeLa

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