![]() ![]() In the wake of recent, highly visible racist events, HHMI’s community has come together to set new goals for diversity, equity and inclusion.” ![]() In a statement made at the time, HHMI president Erin O’Shea said: “Scientists at HHMI and across the life sciences have made breakthroughs using HeLa cells, and we want to recognise the great benefit to science that Henrietta Lacks made possible. Alongside HHMI, National Institutes of Health director Dr Francis Collins has donated a portion of his 2020 Templeton Prize to the foundation. This was followed by an undisclosed six-figure donation to from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) in October, the largest non-profit biomedical research institution in the US. In August last year, UK based firm Abcam became the first ever biotechnology company to make a donation to the Henrietta Lacks Foundation that has used HeLa cells in its research. The Foundation has given grants not only to Lacks’ descendants, but to family members of the unwitting participants in the Tuskegee syphilis studies and the human radiation experiments, among others. Reparations are opening up new conversationsĮstablished by Rebecca Skloot, a science writer whose 2010 book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks brought Lacks’ story into the mainstream, the foundation provides financial assistance to people who were involved in historic scientific research without their knowledge, consent or benefit and their descendants. Science writer and Henrietta Lacks Foundation board member Dr David Kroll puts it into perspective: “Members of the Lacks family were having all this medical research done on their matriarch’s cells, but they couldn’t afford healthcare themselves.” While the multibillion-dollar biotech industry was built on the back of the HeLa cells, her descendants received no financial compensation and were not consulted in the projects in which they were used. Neither Lacks nor her family gave permission for the cells to be harvested, something that was neither required nor commonly sought at the time – and still isn’t. The cells were later commercialised but have never been patented. Gey later propagated the cells to create the HeLa cell line and made them freely available to other researchers. We still don’t fully understand what made them so special, but it was likely a combination of the aggressiveness of her cancer, the cells having multiple copies of the human papillomavirus (HPV) genome and the fact that Lacks had syphilis, which would have weakened her immune system and allowed the cancer to spread further. If they were fed the right mixture of nutrients to allow them to grow, the cells were effectively immortal. Lacks’ cancer was a uniquely aggressive case, and her biopsy sample doubled in volume every 20 to 24 hours where other cultures would normally die out. ![]()
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