Some Justice for the Family of Henrietta Lacks

[Broomstick]

If you don't know who Henrietta Lack was you should. Here is her wikipedia entry. If you don't want to read all of that, know that she is the origin of the HeLa cell line, the first line of "immortal" human cells that has proved invaluable for scientific research all around the world and even in space.

Her cells were taken and developed without her knowledge or consent, to the immense profit of many, but not to her and her descendants who were, in fact, unaware of the cell line derived from their mother and grandmother for decades.

Henrietta's family has reached a settlement with the biotech company that benefited from their mother and grandmother's cells.

Gift link - should be free to all.

The details of the settlement have not been, and likely won't be, released. Nonetheless, I feel that some justice has been served by the world now knowing about Henrietta Lacks, her contributions (even if unknowing), and that her descendants will also receive something from her legacy.

[Jub]

I feel the opposite way about these kinds of gestures.

When we applaud these as being justice it just tells the powerful that they can keep stealing as much as they want and, once they've made enough from it and have a certain level of public backlash, they can pay back the barest fraction of what they gained by their misdeeds and people will be appeased by it. Justice would be the family getting every cent of profit ever derived from their relative and complete control over the cell line and its derivatives. This is a token gesture to make some bad press go away.

[Broomstick]

One change that occurred years ago because of this that permission has to be asked and granted for tissue samples to be used in research. I'm not entirely sure that everyone is 100% in compliance with that, but part of the outrage felt by the family is, among other things, that there was neither knowledge nor consent, and lack of acknowledge of the woman behind all this (the latter being largely rectified at this point). It's not complete protection, but it makes a similar situation less likely to happen.

I am confident I don't have to explain the particular outrage Black people in America would have for the literal buying and selling of a relative's flesh.

As we don't know the details of the settlement we don't know exactly how much the family got in money or anything else.

It is not perfect justice. I agree, it would be more just for the family to receive more, hence the thread title some justice for her family. It's a step in the right direction in my opinion.

[LadyTevar]

Personally, I would like to hear that one detail of the settlement is either royalties on future sales, as I doubt at this point anyone will want to stop using the HeLa cultures all together. What would they replace them with?

As a side note, it's both awesome and scary that Henrietta Lack's human tumor cells were so vibrant they kept growing as long as they had the medium to exist in. Makes you wonder what gene was 'turned on' to cause that, and how many other cancerous tumors in other people have the same ability.

[Broomstick]

Probably more than one mutation would be required, but I'm pretty sure one of them would be the gene that's active in germ cells that generate telomerase to cap the ends of the chromosomes but shuts down rapidly after that in eukaryotic cells (with a few, rare exceptions)

The required mutation(s) do occur from time to time - here's a list of immortal cell lines and origins from wikipedia. No doubt this has occurred from time to time other humans, it's just that unless someone is studying the tumor sample it won't be preserved. Most such "immortal" cell lines probably die after they kill the bodies they originated in.

[Lord Revan]

Probably more than one mutation would be required, but I'm pretty sure one of them would be the gene that's active in germ cells that generate telomerase to cap the ends of the chromosomes but shuts down rapidly after that in eukaryotic cells (with a few, rare exceptions)

The required mutation(s) do occur from time to time - here's a list of immortal cell lines and origins from wikipedia. No doubt this has occurred from time to time other humans, it's just that unless someone is studying the tumor sample it won't be preserved. Most such "immortal" cell lines probably die after they kill the bodies they originated in.

Yeah those cells are cell immortal and more "endless", there's ways to kill them it's just under ideal conditions those cells keep living and reproducing infinitely.

I suspect most example in the wild that aren't discovered/isolated die off when those ideal conditions no longer exists (aka the host dies in most cases).

I don't think we've discovered a truly immortal cell yet aka a cell that simply won't die no matter what you do to it.