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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.
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.
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.
Hate groups...? What a strange mixed up pseudo-political world you must live in.
I simply mean that it appears not to be a science documentary, but rather one of those "personal axe to grind" movies.
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.
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
One might even go so far as to say... HeLa cool!
Er, sorry it just slipped out!
--
Aaron Sherman (ajs@ajs.com)
Besides, the fact that black Africans were involved doesn't negate the wrong done by white Americans (obviously).
Female Prison Rape in NY
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
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
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>
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
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.
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
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
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
UNIX - Not just for Vestal Virgins anymore
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,
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."
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.
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
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
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
Perhaps by "this" country she means Africa and not the USA? Or are we now pretending that black Africans didn't supply the slave trade?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Gee whizz, really? So is America. Two, even. The original quote was "African-American". If the author has specified from which part of Africa her ancestors were abducted, I would have used that.
Besides what? If that's your only point, why bother making it if it's so obvious? I neither said nor implied that.
Don't get me wrong, slavery is appaling. But anyone who's griping about being descended from slaves, even by one generation, is looking for special treatment for themselves and nothing more.
So, your great grandparents were taken from Africa against their will. That's horrific - for them. But now you want compensation and special treatment for what happened to them, but you don't want to go back to Africa (no matter how bad your situation in the USA)? Cry me a river.
I'm not buying it. Yes, we have a society of haves and have nots, of opportunity and deprivation, and yes, it's based on a large part on ancestry and skin tone. But you fix that by addressing the situation today, without making futile attempts to fix the past.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
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...
I don't know, I think the filmmaker's being forthright about her motivations and interest is admirable, and I do agree that it sounds pretty bad to dismiss the work of a filmmaker who says that her thinking about racism in America informs a historical documentary she's working on as "one of *those* documentaries," as you did.
I'll grant you that the analogy between use of tissue samples and slavery is a bit strained, but if you'd read the f'n article, you'd have seen that this particular filmmaker is coming at this from a lot of interesting angles, and is just as open about the relevance of her personal experiences to them. For example, she talks about the parallel questions of consent vs. furthering the public interest that arise in the making of documentaries, and also discusses her interest in exploring the 'mythic' side of the immortal cell line story.
Racism exists (even in Science!!) and by blowing off any discussion of its role in historical developments as 'axe-grinding' you open yourself up to the kind of accusation/questioning you've seen here. I don't think this sort of response is P.C. gone out of control, if I may pre-emptively respond to what I suspect your response to this post might be, but rather a reminder to keep the squelch turned up a little higher up on your own personal bullshit detector, lest you become (or appear) truly insensitive to the important and real concerns and insights of others.
Furthermore, as a trained 'historian of science' (I won't tell you which college in Boston it's from), I find your sanctification of the "science documentary" amusing. It's a seedy, complicated world, and while I enjoy the cut-and-dried 19th-century rivalry-driven PBS train-bridge-construction documentary genre as much as the next guy, I certainly also appreciate a historian who's not afraid to dig a little deeper.
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?
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.
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
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.