Dear Readers,
These are the words from my last post:
"The month of February, 2010, B4 Literacy salutes African Americans who have unselfishly helped to make this USA and the world a better place to live."
After reading an article about young black woman named Henrietta Lacks whose cells were essential in developing the polio vaccine and were used in scientific landmarks such as cloning, gene mapping and in vitro fertilization, I have to add these words after the word unselfishly: and unaware .
The article is about a black 30 year woman who has cervical cancer, she goes to the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. On one of her visits in 1951, one of the scientist took a sample of the tumor to another group of scientist who had been attempting to grow tissues. According to the article Henrietta was unaware that the scientist had taken a sample of her tumor to be studied. For 10 years, the scientists had been unsuccessful when they tried to grow tissue in cultures. Henrietta Lacks cells never died…
“Henrietta’s cells were the first immortal human cells ever grown in culture. They were essential to developing the polio vaccine. They went up in the first space missions to see what would happen to cells in zero gravity. Many scientific landmarks since then have used her cells, including cloning, gene mapping and in vitro fertilization.”
Read more about this in the article in the following link: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/Henrietta-Lacks-Immortal-Cells.html
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by journalist Rebecca Skloot tells down the story of the amazing HeLa cells, Henrietta Lacks, and documents the cell line's impact on both modern medicine and the Lacks family.
