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The Immortal Cell
chromatin writes: "A filmmaker at a college in boston
has been working on the
potentially endless history of Henrietta Lacks which is a fascinating story of where biotechnology comes from and what it does. Lacks died of cervical cancer in 1951, but a small sample of her cancer cells were found to live in culture dishes... and still do. As the first immortal human cell line, HeLa cells are used by researchers today for lots of experiments which whole people simply can't or shouldn't be used for. Working in labs like this with cells like this for several years, it's the first time I've heard her entire name! The Lacks family has never been compensated or really recognized by the scientific community - is this how patenting genes will work?" An odd story, that I've heard mentioned before but never knew much about.
I don't know, but mentioning Bush and "brain drain" in the same sentence is kind of funny and strangely appropriate. ;-)
On the other hand, is there any reason we can't make HeLa Pie ?
Yum !
I think the point that dr_labrat is making is, would Charlene Gilbert have been as interested in making the documentary if Henrietta Lacks had been white? I get the feeling the answer is "no" - it's not even about the issues of consent you mention.
[Me too!] The liberal slant in the mainstream media today is terrible. The NAACP is a communist and unAmerican organization who's only goal is to create more and more and more government welfare programs. What would happen if I called a black guy 'colored'? I'd probably get shot. But they can call themselves 'colored'? Typical liberal bullshit.
That's ridiculous.
Why is it that everything should always involve an exchange of money?! As if money has ever made the world a better place to live in...
This just in...
Cell phone and cigarett manufacturers are claiming ownership of any cancer cells that may potientialy be caused by use of their products. A plan for an EULA for use of the products now voids the individuals right to any cancerous cells in the body. It is unclear if the EULA is covering all cells created, both past and presant, and if they are specific to the product being used.
When questioned, spokesmen from the companies admit that this is being used as a way to ofset research costs into creating stronger, longer living cancer cells. Although they appear to want ownership of cancerous cells, they claim no responsibility for the creation of those cells.
Other industries are expected to jump on this compensation bandwagon soon.
-I just work here... how am I supposed to know?
You haven't heard the soundtrack for this movie yet either, but perhaps you'd like to go ahead and review it as well.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Back half a century ago when this happened it probably wouldn't have occurred to anyone in the medical community to get permission from any patient, old, young, rich, poor, male, female, black, white, red, or yellow, or to have said anything about it to the patient or their families. Perhaps if the patient had been a celebrity of some sort it might have crossed their minds to consider the PR aspects, but that's about it.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
So if very little money was being made, then the family shouldn't be compensated, but if a lot of money is being made, then the family should be compensated? I guess your philosophy is all about the money. If the pot gets big enough, you want a cut.
I don't think the family has to be compensated. You may be able to make an argument that the original woman could be compensated if she didn't agree to donate the cells to science. But, she is dead so there is no one left to compensate.
Compensating the family goes against what I think compensation really means. I get compensated from my employer because I do work for them. My family doesn't get paid for the work *I* do. My family can get compensated after I die because the employer offered a benefits package that has life insurance in it. In that case, it is still compensation given to me, but I chose to have it paid after my death to my family.
My cousin, aunt, uncle, sister, or anyone else has no right to my salary based on family relations. You have just advocated that they do have a right to my salary if I make enough and they want a cut of it.
It is a nice emotional argument to claim that the family should get money because they are poor, but I see no philisophical or logical reason to give them any money. However, it would be good public relations to do so.
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Err... I think the point is that the cells have been used in all sorts of biological experiments in outer-space, around the world, etc.
I doubt (though I'm way too slack to actually read the piece) that they're talking about strapping a brace of test tubes to the nose of an ICBM, pointing at space, and then sending a shuttle a few days later to check how the cells were doing...
You know they call 'em fingers but I've never seen 'em fing. Oh, there they go.
What if you had some superior protein in your
DNA that could make a medicine?
For example, the Italian families that have very
low cholestrol.
This issue will come up in the future.
And just like a "magic" packet on a real network, an "immortal" cell in a real human body is Bad News.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Wouldn't it bother you if someone made an exact clone of you, and then put that clone to work in the salt mines or picking cotton until he or she (because clones aren't 'it') died? How is it any different for someone to harvest cells from you and put them to work for profit well beyond their (your) natural life span? It may not be slavery of a whole person, but it's definitely slavery of parts of your body. Would it be OK with you if after you suffered brain death due to a disease, doctors re-animated your corpse with a simple microcontroller (a few years from now it could happen) and put you to work cleaning the halls at the hospital? I can't believe that more people don't see the ethical problems involved in enslaving someone's flesh like this.
It's great that medical science can cure this woman's cancer, but it's exceedingly unethical to continue to use these cells without her permission or at least the permission of her family. It's true that they could get cells from anybody to use, and if they don't have permission from her then they should do that instead. Maybe some doctor who's a great philanthropist could donate his cells and ensure that his name is remembered forever. But Mrs. Lacks didn't ask for immortality and it's unethical to force it upon her.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
But when you drive your Ford SUV like a sports car and it rolls over and maims your stupid ass, do you sue Ford?
You bet :)
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Maybe you'd be willing to volunteer for immortality in a petri dish in her place, since you can make the decision and she never was given the opportunity. No matter how great the cause, you can't ethically subject a person's body to experimentation after their death without their consent. Would you mind being dug up by medical students after your death and used for studies that advanced human medicine, while you were expecting to just lie and rot in peace instead? The ends do not justify the means.
I can kind of see her point - if this happened to a white woman in the 1950s, do you think the medical community would have been quite so cavalier with her cells, including keeping the information from her family for so long? Let's face it - one of the reasons that Mrs. Lack was an ideal subject was because her family was poor, black, and wouldn't kick up a fuss about any postmortem exploitation of her body.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Very interesting - I remember reading a book called "The Duplicated Man" by James Blish, about a colony on Venus that declared their independence from Earth. They were ruled by a huge man who was effectively immortal but slowly losing his humanity, because the secret to immortality was to effectively give all of your cells cancer and make them immortal. So his body would never die (and in fact was always growing), but his mind was another story...
The actual story was mostly about a machine that could duplicate people (sorta), if you're wondering about the title.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
If my foot were in such a situation, it should be up to me what happens to it. Remember, her cells aren't magically immortal; researchers have to nourish them to keep them alive. If they were still in her body or were left in the operating room, they would have long been dead by now. It's more like a person in a persistent vegetative state who needs a heart and lung machine - the body may live indefinitely, but there's no person involved anymore. In that case the person's family gets to decide when to pull the plug. In Mrs. Lack's case her body has been essentially kept on life support for fifty years, which is almost assuredly not what she or her family would have wanted. How would you like to find out that your grandmother wasn't really buried even though you thought that you had?
It's great that her cells are special and have helped cure diseases. I'm glad that such cells can do some good in the world. But it should be up to her and her family to decide what uses those cells can be put. And if they don't want to contribute to the progress of science, that should be their choice.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
"...I'm an African-American woman whose ancestors survived this country's early participation in the trading, buying, and selling of human flesh - this question is of great concern to me,..."
Riiiight....
Its one of *those* documentaries...
The secret of success is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake those, you've got it made. (Marx)
I find it very hard to believe that people in the US can't get health care (or "struggle" to get it). If they don't have it, then it's because they haven't tried. When I was young my family had very little money, and we went to the county hospital for everything from TB to broken bones. You showed up, avoided the prisoners chained to the benches next to you, saw a doctor (who maybe didn't speak English so well), got treated and left. I don't remember any of us every whining about it or asking for any pity or using our fairly austere upbringing to lend a sad yet authoritative note to some third party's wank of a film. They removed cancer from her. You don't typically get compensation for that kind of thing. At least, people didn't used to. Now that we have socially correct, wooly-headed thinkers like Charlene Gilbert around, that might change.
I wonder how many epidermal cells I've lost without receiving adequate compensation? Someone probably owes me cash. That air handler at Disney World stole my cells! I struggled to make those as a poor child! They traded my flesh for entertainment! I want cash! Someone make me a film about poor children! Breadwinners want their slice!
Either that or we can start a dialog, and talk about all the issues surrounding our cultural paradigm with respect to ethical consent and the shifting mores of a society wrenched with knowing it paid for people whose cells have been also traded as so much chattel and will live on into the next century long after we're all gone but still thinking of the viable mythlike qualities of the implicable ramifications of its moral institutions...
What a load. I want a grant too.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
Cell wasn't immortal. Didn't Gohan take him out?
:)
--
InstantCool
Regular human cells can't divide for ever, the ends of the DNA get eaten away slowly each time they do. Eventualy it gets into the imporntant stuff.
Cancer cells don't have that problem, as the ends, or telomers(sp?) are maintained. That way, you can have a huge amount of research material from just one small sample.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
--
jvev atvf gurm rabs pern gvba
I once saw a very interesting documentary about these cells. At one time other countries discovered self-multiplying cells. It turned out these cells were from Henrietta Lacks too.
--
Me
"There ought to be some way to compel him to donate the cells needed "
Aieee, that opens up a whole new can of worms. Compeled to donate cells for cancer research, hmm seems harmless enough.
Compeled to donate cells for "eternal youth" type research, ok thats not so bad but getting worse.
How about compeled to donate cells for military research (ie disease resistance, strength, intelligence, etc.)
personally i only see dangers in compelling someone to "donate" (btw donate usually connotates a voluntary action) something they dont want to.
Personally I think an agreement along the lines of organ donor agreements of today would be the most elegant solution (noticing we dont compel people to donate organs that could save many lives even though it's no skin of their backs (figurativly)).
"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep in order to gain what he cannot lose."
mefus
In Open Society, GPL Software frees YOU!
One might even go so far as to say... HeLa cool!
Er, sorry it just slipped out!
--
Aaron Sherman (ajs@ajs.com)
Arguing that the use of the cells was immoral because permission was not obtained is silly. People shed billions of cells everyday, from death skin, etc. Using tumourous tissue for non-profit research which may benefit all cancer sufferers and has no consequence for the patient's health or on the outcome of their treatment without permission is a perfectly moral as far as I'm concerned. If you take the extreme view that ANY form of bodily residue requires some form of legal consent before it can be used, then would you regard it as immoral to use forensic material found at a crime scene without the permission of the criminal who left it there? Cancerous tissues are usually incinerated after removal from a patient if they aren't used for research purposes - how often are people asked for permission for their surgical waste products to be incinerated after an operation? Is this a real ethical dilema, I think not . . .
Why should there be any compensation for the families? It is highly likely that the cell sample was taken as part of a standard biopsy as part of a monitoring/treatment program. My understanding of the HeLa line is that it is a standard cell lineage for doing oncological research by academics and is freely available to other cancer researchers at cost. Very few academics actually profit all that much from research and I dare say no one is profiting from distributing the HeLa cells. I know of a number of cases where oncologists could have patented cancer genes, but instead chose to do you right thing and gave away their rights so that the speed at which new treatments were developed was greatly increased.
There are plenty of other people with cancer in the world, whom I'm sure would give a cancer cell sample for free if it would contribute to finding a cure.
Cancer cells may be immortal, insofar as they don't undergo programmed cell death, but they usually continue to mutate at an incredible rate relative to healthy somatic cells - there will be a great number of genetic differences between todays HeLa cells and the original healthy host cells. It isn't as if someone's 'genes are being stolen'.
The paragraph in question:
"I'm interested in the ethical - or not so ethical - relationship between Henrietta Lacks, her family, and Johns Hopkins University," Gilbert said, noting that the Lacks story is a cautionary one with major implications today. Neither Henrietta nor the Lacks family gave permission for her cells to be used for research; in fact, the family didn't learn about the proliferation of HeLa cells until the early 1970s. The Lacks family - still poor and struggling to access health care - has not been compensated for the use of Henrietta's cells.
I checked, although not very carefully, and it seems this is only mention of compensation in the article. It's not even a demand for compensation but a statement of a fact, although made in a way undeniably suggests that a compensation of some sort might be in order.
Even though I agree that a demand for monitary compensation for the cells would pretty questionable, I find it hard to sympathize with those who read the article and found that particular detail the only thing worth commenting on. What about the ethical questions about, for example as there are many that could be asked, persons right to decide what happens to her body? What about funny feeling you get (well, I get at least) when you think about immortality? What about those experimental documentry techniques?
The researchers didn't ask your Mrs. Lacks permissions to use the cells. That's wrong, but not very surpricing as this was the 50's. Lack's family didn't learn about this until the 70's, wrong too. The doctors and researchers do not have any moral right to decide what happens to a patients body, including body parts like organs and cells. Patient's rights must be paramount to doctor's.
There is no question that HeLa cells were extremelly useful for medical research. While usefulness to a researcher does not have baring, usefulness to society does have. A patient must have the right to deny a researcher use of her cells, but I would also content that society has the right to overturn that denial. This should not be taken as a carte blanc assertion that the need of many outweight the right of few. This is a basis for a pragmatic proposal to this difficult question. I for one would feel rather silly if some poor bitter bastard, that had with a chance-mutation developed a cure for cancer, wanted to take it with him to the grave. There ought to be some way to compel him to donate the cells needed (assuming of course that it's just a few cell and not a leg or an eye). Such action should be rare and the procedure formalized, transparent and under democratic control.
I'm far for certain that all questions involed in "commercalization of the human body" would have nice pragmatic solution. In those cases I think we will be better of going with the rights, even if other choices would present clear and useful benefits.
--Flam
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers - Pablo Picasso
At first I thought Cell had come back to life in DBZ. The topics switching from Anime to biology are way too confusing!
Um, this is my sig.
A leukemia patient, John Moore, endured over a dozen "treatment" sessions with his physician, David Golde. These sessions consisted of the removal of his cellular material. Turns out the University of California had worked out a deal with his physician to pay at least 1/3 of a million dollars and rights to 75k shares of stock, in exchange for exclusive access to his research. Dr. Golde even started paying for Moore's travel and accomodations. At this point, Moore became suspicious, and asked about the commerical potential of his cells. After vague answers, he withdrew consent for his cells to be used in research, causing Golde to flip out.
Full details are here.
The truth about Scientology, Xenu, and you: Operation Clambake
I actually had a few questions that I thought weren't mentioned in the article. Please excuse my ignorance of the actual medical proceedings:
1. Lack came from an extremely poor family, the article says. If this is the case, she probably wasn't paying for the hospital bills for cervical cancer. What was her treatment, and how much (if any) did she pay?
2. If the hospital did provide any services for free, it seems very possible that she may have signed waivers at some point. In addition, seems like going to the hospital to have a cancer removed is pretty much relinqueshing it.
I'm not trying to troll here, just raise a few points. Maybe she was compensated, to some extent (not necessarily enough) by free/cheap medical service. Maybe that when we go to the hospital to have something removed (like an appendix, tonsils), we do give it to the hospital. Maybe she did sign some waivers giving the hospital rights here.
The other issue is, can we expect hospitals to ask you to sign a wavier for every urine, blood or other type of sample? You're giving up your cells to them, and, if they have anything of interest, they could very well end up in a lab without your permission!
Please be kind.. I know I may be making a few points against a woman who should have been compensated.
"Of all days, the day on which one has not laughed is the most surely the one wasted." -Sebastian Roch Nicol
"The best laid plans of mice and men gang oft agley..." - ROBERT BURNS
This story isn't unique. People have come forward to hospitals saying "I should be dead but I've developed an honest resistence to [nasty disease]". Doctors run said person's blood and other private bodily fluids off to some lab somewhere, make patents, write papers, and get famous while the original people who were honestly trying to selflessly save the lives of others is completely left out(although these days I don't doubt that others might not be so high minded).
I remember reading that one said person said that the money wasn't important. Its the fact that big pharma companies turned a completely selfless and charitable action into a big money, unquestionably defensable patent that irritated the hell out of him.
Any law that make it illegal to check your body, the most private property on the face of the planet, is inherrantly wrong! Why do we continue to let these pharma companies do this? They claim "..it costs money to do gene research blah blah blah.." but neglect the fact that its stomping all over the rights of everyone out there just to make a buck.
You are right...its not strictly about patents but the fact that people have been using "stuff" from *other people* for "fun and profit" even though it might not be intended that way.
That is a big ethical question in my mind that directly effects gene patents and that is what the article is about. Does US law really want parts of people to exist in perpatuity? Right now once something leaves your body who ever stores can "own" it forever.
As for other information take a look at
this article. Its the old story of John Moore who underwent treatment for cancer at UCLA. The doctors there found something unusual in his spleen that fought off the cancer. They took samples, made a patent, and basically made money. Moore's cells are worth a lot of money, probably worth more than any life insurance policy that Moore could get for himself. Besides he hasn't gotten much credit beyond just living.
This article shows some anicetoded stuff. Stuff from companies rediculously overcharging just to test for a gene that causes life threatening problems(just the test...not even close to a cure) to limitations on the number of tests per year in the hopes they can get a profitable business deal out of it.
Lets say you are a university researcher(you claim to be) and you want to do a study genes and breast cancer. Oops! You can't do that because according to Myriad Genetics, which holds a bunch of patents on genes responsible for breast cancer, they control that stuff. Heck even with express permission from Myriad a reasearch must run the test the way Myriad Genetics perscribes otherwise you risk going to court(ie. discovering a better test on their patented genes is a big no-no). How many mutations are possible on the same set of genes that may or may not cause cancer? Millions and yet Myriad Genetics controls every facet of anything to do with "genes" and "breast cancer".
You can't do research into why there are different shades of blue eyes or why men go bald even why some people sunburn badly. Hurm...I didn't realize that we needed to defend information on why some eyes are sky blue and others are more blue green. I really do believe this approach and this insane race to patent genes will cripple research. How many projects had to be scrapped because they by accident stumbled into a gene someone patented and couldn't get or afford permission to continue work?
I did get off topic but the core ethical questions is the same: the right of anyone to control their own biology. Does discovering the cure to everything that makes you ill really have to involve stomping on privacy?
I agree that the family should receive something if this discovery ever makes money.
This case isn't as simple as the one you posited, where the money is in the bank (well, somebody's bank) even before the sample is obtained.
To make your analogy fit this case, it would be more like this:
The State Barber Association finds a problem w/ cutting certain types of hair and needs to find clippings to see why it is so difficult to cut this hair. Your barber looks through piles of hair and finds your hair matches. They study your hair and gain a better understanding of how to cut your type of hair. Now, maybe barbers make a little more money from people helped out by this technique as their haircuts come out much better than they did before. It would be very hard to prove how much money they got, though.
<tongue_in_cheek> As far as your assertion that you own every cell that originated from your body, I forsee many more problems w/ this than the problems you suggest. Imagine one day your are fined for improper disposal of bodily material when your skin and hair fall off your body and contaminate offices, restaurants, chip fabrication plants, etc.. We need to pay people to clean up this mess or spend the time ourselves to clean this up. When you start paying your bills, then we'll talk about residuals.. </tongue_in_cheek>
Okay, forget compensation for a second. The question is whether or not a person or their heirs have rights to a person's corpse and can determine what is done with it. Focus on the moral aspect of a person's body as their property, the terms of treatment and disposal they can dictate. Imagine if, after Princess Di's death someone took egg cells from her Uterus and started selling them ( or giving them away ). A similar incident actually happened in England, where people's corpses were being sold by Doctors. The point is that doctors cannot assume ownership of a person's extracted tissue. They are just it's caretakers
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
She is immortal and she has never even met Conor McCloud from the Clan McCloud ;-)
Of course she did. How do you think she died?
Now that I understand your post, I was going to speak to it. But then I realized that it just has a question in it (as does your response to me). I don't have the answers to these questions. I think it's certainly possible that the same marketplace economics should be applied to the medically useful cells as the souveniers, but that the two are in different situations. If we could somehow revive Napoleon's cells and then cause them to reproduce, then I really don't see why the marketplace economics should be different. But since we haven't done that with Napoleon's cells, we're going to have to use these ones on their own to determine the rights involved. Then later, when we can revive Napoleon's cells, we can apply the marketplace economics we've established here.
-no broken link
Without going into unnecessary detail, basically it is because the cell gathers several mutations, which screw up certain controls on the cell cycle. Thus the cell is eternaly in the 'growth phase'
To put it into somewhat geeky techno speak, these cells are equivalent to "magic" packets on a network with an infinite TTL. Just in case anyone couldn't understand what he said. Oh, and to use the word "equivalent."
I remember reading about another lineage of cells in a book. They were called TEHE cells (I think), and they were also removed form a cancer patient. If I remember rightly they were also very...how shall I put it...virrulent. Cell cultures that were kept in the same room as them were overtaken by them. They even corrupted some government tissue bank's "pristine" cell cultures. I searched google but couldn't find anything (except a lot of mis-spellings of "the" and "laughter - tehe - get it!"). The story of these cells and the HELA cells is very interesting. Is there anyone out there who can confirm this fading memory? I can't even remember what book I read it in.
What I find humorous is that a Google Search of that phrase returns the official City of Cambridge website as the first match.
You see the title "The Immortal Cell" and you think that you're going to get an interview with Gohan, Goku, and the oh-so-mighty Hercule.
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Hey, if you want to make an omelette, you gotta break some eggs.
"Bugger this, I want a better world." - Jenny Sparks
Ethical use of humans and human tissues in scientific experiments is generally considered to require anonymity for the subject. Otherwise, an awful lot of supposedly confidential medical information about specific individuals would be published. Maybe, 40 years later, it's not entirely relevant that Mrs Lacks had cervical cancer, but I'm sure I wouldn't want the world to know if I were taking an experimental AIDS treatment, for example.
these cells dont really care about telomeres anymore. They dont need telomerase, they gain telomeres by recombining with other cromosomes.
And why would ending aging be good?
welllll ....
Who is making money off these cells? I know the piece this story links to is a bit confusing, but I can assure you that there's no-one out there making money off the cells. As someone pointed out, they are available by the ATCC (American Type Culture Collection) for $167. This is not a lucrative business, I would assume it about covers their costs of storing the cells and administrative efforts.
Also, when you (as a researcher) buy a vial of these cells, you can make your own stocks. Indeed, probably, you wouldn't even have to order them, somebody in your institute probably has a stock she's willing to share.
Invaluable research tool - yes
Lucrative business - definitely not(so far at least)
Hmmm
Of course, there is the other issue, which is: How many novel findings have been made with these cells, could they have been obtained without them, and has any of these findings produced something with commercial value.
This is always an issue with basic research, in itself it generates nothing of commercial value, but the insights might lead to an idea for an anti-cancer drug or whatever. Now, where do you draw the line? Can you really still directly attribute a new drug to the very HeLa cells, with which somebody did some research maybe twenty years before, not related to that drug discovery (the time-to-market for novel drugs is somewhere between 15 and 25 years)
I think there is another point that gets lost when you read the original article: While HeLa cells were the first immortalized cell line, there are many others now on the market, so the cells are not quite as unique as the article makes you believe.
(...)but I still think it's sad that Henrietta Lacks' contribution was never recognized and someone else got the glory. ...
Well, in the biology crowd, the name Henrietta Lacks certainly is known, even though her story is often told as an anecdote. But more recognition in the public would be certainly nice. On a side note, since then, researchers have agreed not to name derived cell lines after the patients they were obtained from (as in HeLa). This was decided on in an effort to keep the cells name separate from any individuum, for whatever that's worth
This story is _not_ about patents, not at all.
People have come forward to hospitals saying "I should be dead but I've developed an honest resistence to [nasty disease]". Doctors run said person's blood and other private bodily fluids off to some lab somewhere, make patents, write papers, and get famous while the original people who were honestly trying to selflessly save the lives of others is completely left out(...).
Could you please back this up with some actual information, i.e. facts?
Any law that make it illegal to check your body, the most private property on the face of the planet, is inherrantly wrong! Why do we continue to let these pharma companies do this? They claim "..it costs money to do gene research blah blah blah.."
What law are you talking about?
And actually, while I see your point somewhat, don't forget that the development of a new drug takes 15-20 years, involves a lot of researchers (who expect a paycheck), expensive instruments, reagents, incredibly expensive clinical studies. The pharma company expends all of this in advance, and when a drug gets on the market, they'll have only a few years before the drug can be legally copied. And they want some return on investment. This is what makes drugs so expensive.
You might think that the big work is done when your person walks in to the doctor with her strange resistance, but it's not ... It's just the beginning of a multi-year/multi-million dollar process.
disclaimer: I am a university biologist, not connected with industry in any way
Lacks died of cervical cancer in 1951, but a small sample of her cancer cells were found to live in culture dishes... w00 h00! More proof that Linux will live forever :-)
I'd like to know where you get your estimates. ATCC will sell you a vial of HeLa cells for $167. The NCI will ship cells to researchers for what is estimated to be just under cost and that fee is $150. A lab usually needs only one sample and they can grow out as many cells as they want for as long as they want. I'd be surprised if there are more than a few dozen orders for HeLa cells per year and there certainly aren't thousands of orders. Add to that the fact that HeLa is just one of ~700 human tumor cell lines ATCC will ship you and I just can't see how you get to HeLa cells being a big money maker. If you know someone making millions, let alone billions on HeLa cells, I'd sure like to see some hard data.
What, me worry?
So, all those people who have donated their time, money and bodies to science knowing full well they will never get a dime for it, are okay but this person seems to require compensation?
Whatever happened to 'for the greater good' that the left keeps telling us about? Oh, that's only when they want to take rights away from 'the people.' I forgot.
DanH
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The cells having been removed at one time
from an actual human does not imply the cells
which have propagated are actually a part
of that same human. Remember you shed skin
cells by the dozens, loose hairs, etc. every
day again. And cells alone do not make a human.
The actual work done is _not_ by the human which
has donated/been ripped off its cells, but by
the researchers or analysts. This is
completely different from slave labour where
the work done _was_ in fact by these people being
sold
Bottom line: the donor did not add anything
substantial to the cells being propagated
apart from having it abstracted for her own
benifit (getting medical care) and thus
does not have right to any compensation.
The case of patenting genes is of a completely
different order. Here research is not rewarded
its "just" compensation through a patent,
but is effectively all FUTURE research being killed off.
This last fact can e.g. prohibit finding a cure
for a disease simply because it involves the
malfunction of a patented gene, and the patentees
do not find it cost-effective to do the research
themselves.
Regards,
Exactly. I've also read that they've been known to replace other cultures acting as accidental contaminants because they are so hardy and aggressive to the point of causing serious problems for researchers because they end up unknowingly working with something different than what they're supposed to be working with. I remember that a book was written about these cultures quite a few years ago (the book title I remember is probably A Conspiracy of Cells ).
As for some of your other questions, other cancer cells *are* immortal and will replicate endlessly. Also, regular cells can be immortalized by fusing them with cancer cells (=hybridoma) or by infecting them with a virus.
"IIRC, they even *look* special, growths of HeLa look like netting with PERLS strung on it, which is apparently rather unusual (disclaimer: IANABiologist)."
With a typo like that, I wonder what you are?
Gimme a break...has Lambert BEEN in a decent movie since the original Highlander?
Well, there's some Luc Besson movie I wanna see with him in it, but not till I get back to the states and can see it with ENGLISH subtitles.
Never heard of Mean Guns, though...is it better than Avalon?
When a hospital perform an operation (like removing a leg or something) do we then order then to take the part with us back home to put on a shelve?
Well, when I have my car worked on, I have them save the old parts....
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
When you drive your Ford Escort into a tree because the road was wet, do you sue Ford?
No.
---
Hammer of Truth
So behind all the pretty words about etical, racial and proverty problems, it all comes down to "me! me! me!".
--
TC - My Photos..
My opinion on this topic is: since genetic material is, by its nature, not unique, it should not be possible to patent it. Therefore, the family should not receive anything, however it should also be obligatory for the researchers to put the results of their investigation into public domain. As of any future developments using that genetic material, any company should be allowed to use this material for the manufacturing of drugs.
Genetic material is in most cases not unique. Therefore it will not be just to allow the grabbing of discoveries by someone who was simply the first to spot some phenomenon. Genetics contain enormous goods and evils for the whole of humanity, therefore the custody over it should also be common.
As of the economic issue, I am aware that research costs money; however big biotech companies can just as well finance their research labs as they do now, since practical use of genetic technologies also calls for considerable investments, decreasing the possibilities of parasitical competition.
A hair dye company is having great trouble finding a particular shade of brownish blondish hair. They offer a $100 million dollar bounty to the State Barber Association for a sample of this exact hair color.
Turns out it's your exact hair color. Your barber takes your hair clippings and retires forever. You don't find out until after the fact.
Tell me how many milliseconds would go by before you would be on the phone to a lawyer.
If anyone owns anything, you own your own body. You own every piece of it, every hair, every cell, every little bit of it. Ms. Lacks give a part of her body so her physician could try to cure her disease, a service she presumably paid for.
She did not authorize this. She did not LICENSE this use of her tissues. If you're going to be a capitalist, then don't be a hypocrite. This was, quite simply, a theft of Ms. Lacks' property. She deserves compensation.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
For about 5 billion years, the same single cell that spawned on this planet has been splitting and mutating into the many varieties we see today. As the only species on the planet capable of understanding this, it is our duty to make sure we don't screw it up, making that cell's long struggle a complete wasted. In a sense, that cell, and thus humanity, is this planet's attempt at reaching beyond its primitive boundaries and propagating further through the universe. We are nothing more than a stage in a process of macro-panspermia. If we don't destroy ourselves, we'll be able to coat the universe with all sorts of life, moving that immortal cell onward to other worlds.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
that these cells are rewarded with a lifetime achievement award. Per usual send the fam the obligatory fruit basket.
If we don't make light of everything, we are just stumbling in the dark - Blank
ehm imagine all cells would divide indefinetely. your body would have shape nor size, muscles nor bones, ass nor brain, oh! the last thing doesn't really make a difference. read the article, stay on topic thank you
Technically, the cells aren't immortal. An individual cell is just as likely to die as any other cell on Earth. However, since they are essentially single celled organisms now, these human cells can divide and spread to any habitable location. Assuming a low rate of mutation (characteristic of human mitosis), this cell line could live a very, very long time. Since humans usually only live about 85 years on average (and then all our cells die), that's why they're calling them immortal.
It's not just that these cells are living in a petri dish, or that she had cancer. The intro doesn't mention it, but HeLa cells have the ability to live in a wide variety of situations. The original lab realized that the cells were contaminating everything, because the cells were living outside the petri dishes (on people's hands, on desktops, etc). This is the first case of human tissue being able to survive away from the body, without the support of the circulatory system, immune system, or anything.
It sounds like everyone is falling into the whole copyright debate, rather than realizing the importance of the cells themselves.
Ok, I suppose they don't *deserve* compensation, but it would be the right thing to do, in my opinion. People who win the Nobel Prize don't *deserve* compensation either really, it's a thank you note. It would be the polite, civilized thing to do to give them some compensation as a "thank you".
But at this point, who would give it to them? And who exactly are the "them" that would get it? Might be too hard by now.
The problem I have with this is the same problem I have with giving blood. Personally I would give blood every week as I think it would benefit people. However, the blood that I give ends up costing far too much for the people who receive it. If I'm going to give a part of my body I want the result (be it research or treatment) to be affordable. I don't want others to be fueling their greed off of my body parts. Perhaps we should look into licensing for cells. GPL your DNA.
man what school did you go to? i took intro to biology for my science credit and we learned about these.
Here is a little further information about Henrietta Lacks and George Gey. The Henrietta Lacks article is from John Hopkins Magazine and the Gey article is from a University of Pittsburgh article. The Gey article gives a littl more info about his attempts at setting up cell lines and his life, etc.. The Lacks article talks about the family, how they first found out 25 years later that there mothers cells were used and ethical issues, etc..
e .html
http://www.univ-relations.pitt.edu/pittmag/cultur
http://www.jhu.edu/%7ejhumag/0400web/01.html
I'll write the check
...and wait for the cells to cash it.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
She is immortal and she has never even met Conor McCloud from the Clan McCloud ;-)
Obviously YANAB
1 /cellcycle/cellcycl1.htm
We do know why cells like these and other immortal cell lines live forever.
Without going into unnecessary detail, basically it is because the cell gathers several mutations, which screw up certain controls on the cell cycle. Thus the cell is eternaly in the 'growth phase'
For those of you who hunger for more info:
http://www.ndsu.nodak.edu/instruct/mcclean/plsc43
If you would be upset if someone stole your idea and sold it as his own (e.g. using GPLed code in a closed-source commercial product), how would you feel if someone took a part of your body and sold it? Sure your cells are free, but HeLa cells are a billion dollar industry. Someone is making a lot of money from selling a part of someone else's body and the original owner never got a cent.
----
Many other cancer cells do. In fact there are tons of immortalized cell lines available to research labs. The important aspect of the HeLa cells is that they were the first ones that did it well.
As what it costs to obtain HeLa cells, the situation is a lot like open source software. Most people get them from someone they know, but it you want you can pay a "distributor".
What about acknowledgement? The article describes the situation as a woman who's being used (if she's not getting much credit, and they're her cells, she's being *used*, IMNSHO) for scientific research, whose name most people haven't even heard of. The poster even mentioned that, though they had worked with these HeLa cells, they didn't know her story.
I'm not saying they should build a huge statue or anything, but at least mention in a science/medicine journal how helpful this woman's existence has been to research.
Emacs: for people who just never know when to
It doesn't sound like anybody agreed to being a donor in this case, though. The researcher just saw something useful, grabed it, and started showing off to his peers by passing it around. I'd be real curious to know if the family even knew it was happening at the time. (Let alone consented to it beforehand).
Do you know that he won't act with his glasses on, and he's almost blind? And he can't get contacts for some reason. I am so glad I didn't have to do any sword fights with him! Also, I always that it was intersesting that the only Scots in the movie (Sean Connery) was Egyptian. Heh.
What one has to realize is that Henrietta Lacks went to Johns Hopkins to be tested and treated. Because it's affiliated with a University, it's a "research hospital," which means that above and beyond the current standard of care, patients should expect that the attendees and physicians also perform research on the side. Now this fact does not condone the conduct of the physician(s) who sent off her cells for culturing without the proper consent (assuming that he or she didn't get consent, because I'm not quite sure if that was the case--this was a research hospital after all). Because the incident occurred in the 1950's, you can be sure that the rules and regulations were not in place and this sort of conduct was probably acceptable. Moreover, the doctor-patient relationship then was nothing like the doctor-patient relationship now. Doctors then were viewed as "doctor knows best," whereas now, patients have the upper hand. I've only merely addressed the issue of patient/subject consent. The whole issue of proper compensation is a whole different subject. At which point can she claim that the cells are her's or is it public domain? Her cancerous cells would have been no use to her unless she had the facilities and the knowledge to keep them cultured and happy.
To learn more about the OHRP and human subject research and consent:
P.S. The "21 CFR 50" only covers research done using chemical/biological agents that will eventually need FDA approval. Imagine the hundreds and thousands of other types of human research that doesn't involve the use of drugs and these agents--hence the type of research that is not federally regulated!
Linux at home
The argument, which I don't agree with, is not really about ownership of a few cells. It's about being uninformed accomplices in an effort whose magnitude was unknown. Their family name has been carried from lab to lab and has become part of the medical nomenclature. What started with their cells has now become the backbone of an entire branch of medical science. Had they said instead, "Nope. Nothing to see here." and cast the cells into the hopper there would be no issue. There is a sentiment, erroneous in my thought, that if you contribute to something significant you should be rewarded in a similar magnitude.
I happen to agree, that they're just discarded cells, like old toenail clippings.
- Sig this!
If these scientists want to do something useful they should find out why the cells arent dying, perhaps they can end aging.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
The Lacks family has never been compensated or really recognized by the scientific community...
No one has mentioned that hospitals routinely 'claim' the placenta and cord (and it's precious stem cell rich blood) for their uses (including sale). Ethically, is this the same situation? Shouldn't the family at least have the choice as to what happens to their cast off body parts?
Does paying for and agreeing to an operation give doctors/hospitals/researchers rights to 'derived works' from your parts?
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
I fear that the woman behind this, Charlene Gilbert, is going to turn it into some kind of personal vendetta and have it be another story about the white devil. She is already fused with black pride all through her story, and is clear in only one thing: revenge.
She seems more concerned with the fact someone wasn't payed than what have come from HeLa cells -- breakthroughs and cures in medical history.
You can see where this is going to based upon her prior film, about "black farmers and land loss since the Civil War," this will likely be the same tone: racially deviding and told with a slanted, pro-ethnic stance.
It's sad. Henrietta Lacks is a living legend who continues to live and help people even after death. I'm sure anyone would want to have the cure for polio and other diseases attributed to their name. I personally think it's disgusting to put money into this as this film-maker woman seems to want to do. We're talking about the human species here, not money or questions of racial black-white. This is much larger than trivial issues of that nature.
"I'll just chip in a bit for RedHat: I actually have that installed on my university machine." - Linus, '95
See:
d etail.cgi?collection=ce&atccNum=CCL-2
http://phage.atcc.org/cgi-bin/searchengine/direct
Only $167.00.
Could it be that this woman is the single largest human in the world with millions of her reproducing cells, even being sold on the Internet?
"I'll just chip in a bit for RedHat: I actually have that installed on my university machine." - Linus, '95
Indeed, it is in the Peoples Republic of Cambridge.
If they made JayLo cells immortal instead of HeLa, there'd be money in it.
www.lucernesys.comHorizon: Calendar-based personal finance
Did the patient or her family give permission for her remains to be used? No, they didn't learn about this for several decades after. That is unethical. It is deeply, deeply unethical.
What if the patient, or her family, had religious beliefs that conflicted with her body parts living on after her death, and being harvested?
Look at the turmoil stirred up about a year ago, over the case of Dr Dick van Velzen. Van Velzen was the senior pathologist at a children's hospital in the UK. And it appears he ordered the surreptious bottling and preservation of the organs of every baby who underwent a postmortem at his hospital. The press reports say this amount to something like 15,000 individual's organs.
Hospital rejects Van Velzen's claims
Van Velzen pleads guilty to improperly storing children's organs
UK Doctor Organ Harvest Outrage
You've got to get permission for stuff like this.
The note I was replying to was talking about the ownership issues. Who owns your cells? Do you own your cells, and your unique(*) genotype? When you die, who owns your body? If you were unusually tall, do I get to dig up your skeleton, and display it in a circus sideshow?
How about an antiquities museum? What if some of your lineal descendants give permission? What if they all deny permission?
(*) Unless you have an identical twin.
As in this case, the doctor didn't ask anyone's permission. However, this patient hadn't died. He was still alive and kicking, and when he found out he was angry. He sued for a cut. I'd like to know how the case was resolved.
Unlike the case of this woman, the biopsy was not taken in the fifties. It would have been the late seventies or early to mid eighties.
I dont know about anyone else, but I'd love the idea of a part of me 'living on' far into the future for the sake of science.
:)
The only thing I'd be worried about is people laughing at the state of my DNA in 10 years time...
bzzt ... wrong (I think).
It's not like this woman is very special. She just happened to be around when a scientist needed a cell culture. He could have taken them from anyone.
I may be wrong, but to the best of my recollection, these cells *are* very special. The scientists originally just took a standard cell sample the way they always do when someone has cancer, only in this case the cancer cells turned out to multiply like crazy and even contaminated other cell lines - unintentionally.
IIRC, they even *look* special, growths of HeLa look like netting with perls strung on it, which is apparently rather unusual (disclaimer: IANABiologist).
yeah, but apparently these HeLa cells are even more out of control than ordinary cancer cells. What makes them special is not that they are "immortal", but rather that they have a tendency to contaminate everything they come across. Again from memory: after they were taken from the patient and given a standard lookover just like every other cell sample taken from a cancer patient gets, apparently they were more or less left alone for a while in some sort of whatever it is scientists keep cell samples in, together with samples from other patients. Months (or years, I'm not sure) later, the Thing They Keep Cell Samples In was opened for some reason or other, and they found out *every* sample in the Thing had been contaminated by HeLa. That's when they found out HeLa was special.
Ah, but the thing isn't that 'You drove the Ford Escort'. The HeLa cells have managed to infect a whole lot of other cell lines, thus ruining research programs, even when suitable methods for keeping the cultures pure were taken. Granted, the methods weren't exactly suitable, as was proven with the contaminations, but before it was figured out, HeLa contaminated a whole lot of cell cultures. Now, my point was that if the Lacks family is going to benefit from the HeLa cells, won't they also become responsible for the damages the same cells have caused? Or should they only reap the benefits? Without responsibilities? Of course, this seems to be the ideal situation in US of A... :)
I wonderif the Lacks family being compensatedfor the benefits from HeLa cell research woul open themselves up for further compensation claims for thenumerous researches that were ruined when HeLa cells infected other cultures?
1) It isn't legal to sell/buy human organs or cadavers
a -good-feeling thing.
2) It is legal to sell/buy human blood & plasma
Bottom line, this is America baby and if they didn't get a donation form signed by her or the family saying they can do research (and somewhere down the line make $$) with her disembodied cells, they probably owe money. Hence the whole not-even-telling-the-family-so-at-least-they-get-
We're not talking academia here either, there are some enormously profitable drug companies out there and you can bet they benefited from HeLa cells even if they didn't outright use them.
When the Cancer cure comes (good luck on that but whatever) you can bet it will be in a very expensive pill/shot/whatever, and while BigAssPharmaceutical, Inc will be getting a nice amount of cash on each sale, a certain Lacks family will be doing good just to pay full price for the generic version.
Nope
The cells are sent around for free.
It's the technology around it that is the industry. If the family starts whining they'll just take cells from somebody else. It's not like this woman is very special. She just happened to be around when a scientist needed a cell culture. He could have taken them from anyone.
It's a multi-billion dollar industry because scientist work with these cells, and those scientist have to be paid (GNU's not University). That's where the mony is going. NOBODY is paying royalties to the scientist who happened to isolate these cells. You pay royalties to people to studied the cells (which costs money) and found an application with these cells.
tsk.
compensating the family?? for WHAT?
They've taken cells out of the body to check for cancer, as they do with all cancer patients. Only difference is that they kept propagating the cells. WHY do we have to pay the family of this woman? Did they suffer in any way from this???
If I die of cancer, and scientist manage to use my cells after my death to study and cure other cancer patients, that is more compensation then I could hope for!
also: this had *nothing* to do with patenting genes! That line is just added to create some extra hysteria among the masses who just do not understand how all this biotecho goes.
The way copyright law works, someone who produces a work gets automatic protection of that work. Though IANAL, I wonder if her estate could claim that the genes from her cells are a copyrighted work.
-You can cry, but you'll still die. There'll be no tears in the end.
I believe the authors of this HeLa product would have to be her parents,
I disagree. Her parents may have provided the raw materials, however they did not create the work. No more than the person(s) who sold Picasso his paint and canvas created any of his work.
Her parents were the donors of the raw materials, however it was the RNA and DNA in her cells that did all of the work.
-You can cry, but you'll still die. There'll be no tears in the end.
Of course it means something just like your "Water" version means something. It has value and so it makes things possible that would not be otherwise.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
In Denmark where I live, you have to registrar if a hospital may use your organs after your death, and you can also registrar you body to science. This would give people the free choice. If you're not registered, your relative decides. I believe it's the same in US, where the hospital needs permission to do an autopsy or organ donation.
In case you're alive when some organ, cancer or other part is removed from you, you should be asked if it should be destroyed after testing it. (All "unidentified" parts removed from inside the body are tested for cancer in Denmark).
But I fear a commercial market. When money becomes involved in this we start to see scary scenarios. Just look at the black market for organs.
But you clearly have a point worth noticing.
Saggi
-:) Oh no - not again.
www.rednebula.com
Stupid! Where do your own cells come from? You parents, right. But they don't own you. And even the cell's we could claim to be ours, we throw away. When a hospital perform an operation (like removing a leg or something) do we then order then to take the part with us back home to put on a shelve? Of cause we don't. And in out daily lives our body reject lots of dead and living cells. If we cut our finger, should we claim the blood?
The whole idea of owning cells or bodyparts is very scary to me. Why have people become so obsessed by owning every thing from ideas to cells? It appears that if someone in any way can make money from someone else (often with the help of lawyers) they should. What is the world coming to?
Compensate? Anyone looked that word up in a dictionary. I don't hope my family need to be compensated for being relatives to me...
As for the cells themselves, I find that story much more interesting. Science studies into cells like these will provide us all with knowledge to cure diseases and even prolong life. This story have potential of both scientific information as well as ethical issues, way beyond if someone should be compensated economically, because they are a relative to someone.
Saggi
-:) Oh no - not again.
www.rednebula.com
LOL, I can think of a number of families that might want compensation for certain relatives...!
http://www.themeparks.ie
1. Most science is conducted with a mix of monies, private funding (VC etc), public funding (nonprofits via donations), and taxes (via federal institutional grants from NIH, DoD, etc.) and secondarily through taxes (SBIR grants).
2. Scientific endeavors funded through federal funds are supposed to be made available to the gov't for use without additional licensing fees.
3. Peer-reviewed journals used to require that scientists publishing through them would openly allow collaboration through access to their data or their cell lines, materiels, bioligicals (e.g. mice, bacteria, other creatures) with particular mutations appropriate for studies.
4. There is a big debate about the human genome prject data and the embargoing of the data by private firms which used public monies.
5. A lot of scientists have seen the cash register instead of the light and are looking towards their own personal beneficence rather than 'the public good'.
6. Physicians, clinical and research types, used to share information about particular cases to create larger datasets allowing them to be aware of particular problems that may occur very infrequently. Nowadays, with the competition for grants and funding, information cards are held close to the chest and very little is shared.
Doesn't this seem very parallel to the open source software community? What are we in it for? Is it for the greater good or for personal gain?
It is possible to have personal gain and public benefit. They are not mutually exclusive. However, certain elements always feel that they should be able to profit enormously and obscenely from things which they did not even create.
And on another parallel with open-source software, the Patent Office has seen fit to allow the patenting of certain organisms based on their genetic makeup. I believe that prior art exists for these organisms and thus these objects should not be patentable.
The way copyright law works, someone who produces a work gets automatic protection of that work.
I believe the authors of this HeLa product would have to be her parents, and the date of creation of this product would be birthdate minus approximately 0.75 years. That would place the creation date at the turn of the century, that other century. That means that the pre-1928 copyright laws would apply, but the 1978 changes would allow the copyright to exist from the death of the creator or copyright holder plus 75 years. So if you know when her parents died, there could possibly be a copyright issue. But I don't think so.
What are you doing in your cubicle at this time of night. What time is it there, anyway?
My cells. You want to make money off them I get a share of the profit! Simple no?
No sig here. Move along. No sig here. Move along...
As I understand it these cells multiplicate endlessly as long as there is food arround to provide them with resources to do it (does it coast much for a laboratory to get a piece of such a cell colony I wonder :). What I don't get is why can't other cancer cells do that? (or maybe not only cancer cells).
Another thing that comes to my mind is that after so many divisions (that's how they multiplicate right?) these cells must mutate and become who knows what. So can they be still used on the basis that they contain human DNA?
And finally the last thing that comes to me mind (just now :) is if any of them cells actually die or they only divide? That would be like they are realy immortal right?....cool i think :)
I am on topic. Sorry for not making my point clear. I ment to ask if any of the MUTANT CANCER "immortal" cells actually DIE (I'm speculating with the word "immortal" here :) or almost all of them manage to devide. I'm just interested to know what realy is so special about these perticular cancer cells and the only thing that comes to my mind is this. Meybe their agressivness (someone wrote about that) is realy about almost all of them managing to devide and thus keeping the colony evergrowing?
I was just wondering if indipendent filmmaker Charlene Gilber have permission from Henrietta Lacks to make a film about her? Or will the Lacks family see any compensation from the film.
The dramatic points about this story are that 1. Henrietta Lacks died of cancer 50 years ago. 2. Cells from her fatal tumor are still growing. 3. The biomass of those surviving cells is much greater than Ms. Lacks herself ever represented. 4. The cells are well known among medical researchers, but she herself remains much less reknowned. 5. Neither she nor her family ever received money for the use of the cells. Check out www.atcc.org and do a search for "human" cell lines. At least half of the resulting 2000+ cell lines came from a people with nearly identical stories (just most most of them died more recently). I work with a cell line from a white man who died from prostate cancer. Poor guy! No movie either!