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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?
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
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
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.
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