Friday 25 June 2010, 19:46
I have always been fascinated by the story of Henrietta Lacks.
Henrietta was an African American woman from Baltimore who died of cervical cancer in 1951. Before she died some of her cancerous tissue was taken - without her permission - and the cells have been reproducing in laboratories around the world ever since.
Henrietta Lacks' cells are immortal. They are known as the HeLa cell line, and they have become deeply involved in all sorts of medical and genetic research - sometimes in the most unexpected ways.
Back in 1997 I made a film for the BBC - called The Way of All Flesh - which told the story of Henrietta and her cells.
A new book about Henrietta Lacks has just been published, and it has become a best-seller in America. And Oprah Winfrey is planning to make a film about it.
I thought I would put the film up as a background to the history and the sciences involved.
It is a really odd story - and the film also has in it members of Henrietta's family including the wonderful Deborah Lacks who is Henrietta's daughter.
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Saturday 19 June 2010, 18:56
Thursday 8 July 2010, 17:33
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Comment number 1.
mcjhn126th June 2010 - 2:59
there's a good section of the 'are we alone' SETI podcasts about this, with an interview with the book's author.
part1
http://setiradio.blogspot.com/2010/05/are-we-alone-cell-cell-hela-cells.html
part2
http://setiradio.blogspot.com/2010/05/are-we-alone-cell-cell-rebecca-skloot.html
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Comment number 2.
Lydia26th June 2010 - 4:08
Walter Nelson-Rees?! Love him.
And since when does Oprah make movies?
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Comment number 3.
mcjhn126th June 2010 - 5:01
It's a tragedy that no scientists or journalists explained to Deborah (Henrietta's daughter) and family the scientific details.
In that podcast Rebecca Skloot describes how she took Deborah to a lab to see Hela cells. Deborah asked basic questions that should have been answered long ago. After being able to look at them through a microscope and discovering none of her mothers normal cells survive (only her cancer), she felt a lot better.
I wouldn't say Hela cells defeated science, science is just a method of finding out about Nature, and they helped scientists find out a lot.
There's some interesting research.
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/david_agus_a_new_strategy_in_the_war_on_cancer.html
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/william_li.html
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Comment number 4.
Chris27th June 2010 - 1:37
...and the same story in the terribly fun RadioLab podcast: http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2010/05/07
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Comment number 5.
Eamonn Dwyer28th June 2010 - 11:38
There's an excellent obituary of Walter Nelson-Rees here from a friend of his called Edward Hooper: http://www.aidsorigins.com/content/view/221/2/
(The site itself is well worth checking out if you're interested in the Congo of the 1950s).
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Comments 5 of 9