henrietta lacks RG

55. What was the Supreme Court of California's decision regarding the Moore lawsuit?

When tissues are removed from your body, with or without your consent, any claims you might have had to owning them vanishes. (Ruled against Moore).

66. What physical ailments did Deborah suffer from as a result of the excitement and stress of seeing her mother's cells for the first time, and learning about Elsie?

High blood pressure and blood sugar, which led to confusion, panic, and incoherent speech.

27. What was the result of Southam's first research study?

Most grew into a hard nodule. When removed, it came back for a few of the patients, and even spread to one of the patient's lymph nodes

61. According to Stevenson, why did scientists develop the argument that HeLa cells are no longer human?

"Scientists don't like to think of HeLa cells as being little bits of Henrietta because it's much easier to do science when you disassociate your materials from the people they come from."

60. Was his theory accepted by the scientific community?

Not challenged but not acted on- still classified as human today.

2. What simile does she use to explain the functions of the different parts of a cell?

A cell is like a NYC street- crammed full of molecules and vessels endlessly shuttling enzymes and sugars from one [art of the cell to another, pumping water, oxygen, and nutrients in and out of the cell. Little cytoplasmic factories work 24/7, cranking out sugars, fats, proteins, and energy to keep the whole thing running and feeding the nucleus.

9. How are different types of cancer categorized?

Based on the type of cell they start from. Hers was carcinoma, which grow from epithelial cells that cover the cervix

28. Based on the results of the second study, what two things did Southam believe that injections of HeLa cells might be able to do?

But those were patients that already had cancer- Southam got healthy volunteers in an Ohio prison who developed tumors in their arms but were able to fight them off completely, and gained immunity after each subsequent injection. Believed he might be able to develop a cancer vaccine or test cancer by measuring the body's rates of rejection.

10. Explain how the development of the Pap smear improved the survival rate of women diagnosed with cervical cancer.

By the time a woman showed symptoms of cervical cancer there was little hope of a cure, but the smear let doctors detect precancerous cells by scraping cells from the cervix with a curved glass pipette and then were examined under a microscope. The woman would have a hysterectomy and the cancer was almost entirely preventable.

59. Explain Van Valen's theory that HeLa cells are "no longer human."

Cells change while growing in culture- exposed to chemicals, sunlight, and different environments which can all cause DNA changes. Changes were passed onto daughter cells, creating new families of HeLa cells that differed from one another. Van Valen reasoned that the cells were evolving separately from humans and having a separate evolution is really what a species is all about.

6. What happens when there is a mistake during the process of mitosis?

Cells start growing out of control- cancer

48. What was the purpose of President Nixon's National Cancer Act?

Designated 1.5 billion dollars towards cancer research- many believed it was to distract from the Vietnam War. Announced cancer would be cured in five years.

22. Why is standardization important in scientific research?

Didn't know each other's ingredients, recipes, cells, etc, and would make it nearly impossible to replicate each other's experiments (discovery isn't valid if it can't be repeated by others). Gey organized a committee to standardize tissue culturing.

5. What beneficial biological processes involve mitosis?

Embryos growing into babies, bodies creating new cells for healing wounds, or replenishing blood we've lost.

38. How was Gartler able to link the contamination problem to HeLa?

Gartler knew G6PD-A was AA exclusive and wrote to Gey asking about the HeLa's donor's race, and Gey told him HeLa was a colored woman.

13. What did HeLa allow scientists to do for the first time?

Grow cells, study cancer cells without them dying, possibly learn a way to damage and wipe out cancer cells

51. Why did advances in genetic research necessitate establishing the legal requirement that doctors or researchers obtain informed consent documentation prior to taking DNA samples from patients for research?

HEW found that the federal oversight of human-subject research was inadequate and that there was a lot of "indifference by those charged with administering research and its rules at local institutions."

56. Explain how the human papillomavirus (HPV) causes cervical cancer.

HPV inserts its DNA into the DNA of the host cell, where it produces proteins that lead to cancer. Discovery would lead to HPV vaccine.

46. After finding out that his cancer was terminal, what reason did Gey give for his decision to offer himself as a research subject?

He hoped his cells, like Henrietta's, might become immortal- told doctors careful instructions for collecting and growing. Volunteered for a lot of experiments that mostly ended up hurting him.

34. What disturbing discovery did scientists make about the way HeLa responded in orbit?

HeLa became more powerful after each mission, dividing faster with each trip.

39. What unique abilities did HeLa have that allowed it to contaminate cultures without researchers being aware that contamination had occurred?

HeLa could float through the air on dust particles and thus traveled easily to contaminate other cultures.

63. Why are HeLa cells able to live beyond the Hayflick limit?

Human cancer cells contain an enzyme called telomerase that rebuilds the telomeres on chromosomes that for normal cells, shorten with every division until they die.

1. The author uses several similes to describe cells. What simile does she use to describe the way a cell looks?

It looks like a fried egg- nucleus is the yolk and the cytoplasm is the egg white.

21. Why was the development of methods of freezing cells an important scientific breakthrough?

It made it much easier to send cells around the world using the already standardized method for shipping frozen foods and frozen sperm for breeding cattle. Researchers could store cells between experiments without worrying about keeping them fed and sterile. Could suspend cells in various states of being- after certain amount of time in experiment, at different points in the cell cycle, etc.

42. What did Gartler suggest about spontaneous transformation?

It might not exist because it's just the culture being taken over by HeLa.

3. What do these similes suggest about biology?

It mimics large scale life on a small level too- small parts making up a whole

8. What does this finding suggest about Henrietta's cancer?

It was unlike anything they had seen before, or it came out of nowhere

53. Describe the lawsuit that set a legal precedent for patenting biological "products" such as cell lines.

John Moore, who had his spleen removed because of cancer, filed against his doctor who kept requesting follow-up appointments to take bone marrow/blood/semen and was being generally dodgy with what they were doing with them. Eventually ended up trying to patent the "Mo" cell line- had market value of 3 billion.

52. Why is the publication of this information troubling from an ethical and legal standpoint?

Legally: Publishing personal medical info like that (name with DNA info, where a lot of info can be derived) could violate the 1996 HIPAAct and result in major fines. Ethically: Privacy violation/lack of informed consent issues

25. Describe the role Microbiological Associates played in the development of the field of cell culture, and the industry of selling HeLa cells and other human biological materials.

Made HeLa cells much more easily accessible because scientists could now just buy the cells rather than having to go through the process of growing them themselves. Contributed to media and equipment standardization and made culturing easier and scientists grew cells of all kinds. Dominated industry.

17. Explain how a neutralization test is used to determine a vaccine's efficacy.

Mixing blood serum from newly vaccinated children with live poliovirus and cells in culture. If the vaccine worked, the serum from a vaccinated child's blood would block the poliovirus and protect the cells. If it didn't work, the virus would infect the cells and cause damage that scientists could see with a microscope.

11. Summarize the main obstacles Gey and his assistants faced in their effort to grow cells.

No one knew what nutrients they needed to survive, or how best to supply them to the cell. Contamination- bacteria and other microorganisms could easily find their way into cell cultures.

57. Are scientists able to definitively explain why HeLa grew so powerfully?

No. They can immortalize cells today by exposing them to certain viruses or chemicals, but very few cells have become immortal on their own like Henrietta's did.

45. What type of cancer was George Gey diagnosed with?

Pancreatic cancer- one of the deadliest types.

54. Summarize the pros and cons of giving patients legal ownership of their cells

Patient can benefit from money, patient can be really conveniently helpful (Slavin partnering with Blumberg to create the first hep B vaccine). Researchers taking the cells without consent would risk being charged with theft. "Threat to the sharing of tissues for research purposes."

24. Explain the contribution that HeLa made to the emerging field of genetics.

People thought that humans had 48 chromosomes, but the clumping made it hard to see until a scientist accidentally mixed the wrong liquid with HeLa cells and caused the chromosomes to spread out, where they could be accurately counted- discovered that humans have 46 chromosomes, not 48. Knowing the correct amount made it possible to diagnose genetic diseases/see if someone has too few or too many chromosomes.

49. Why did researchers want DNA samples from Henrietta's family?

Researchers for the Human Genome Project were trying to figure out how to stop the contamination problem. Someone said that could sort everything if they found genetic markers specific to Henrietta and used them to identify which cells were hers and which cells weren't, but they also would need DNA samples from her immediate family for comparison.

58. Describe the contribution that HeLa has made to research on the HIV virus and the AIDS epidemic.

Richard Axel infected HeLa cells with HIV to see what was required for HIV to infect a cell- an important step toward understanding the virus and potentially stopping it.

7. What obstacle kept Deborah from realizing her dream of returning to school?

She had a stroke in church after 9/11- then did not have enough money to afford it

7. What did Howard Jones find "interesting" about Henrietta's medical history?

She had a term delivery at that hospital but there is no note made at that time or when she returned after six weeks that there's any abnormality of the cervix

64. What important misunderstanding about HeLa does Lengauer clarify for Deborah?

She thought it was her mother's regular cells still living, and Lengauer clarified that it's only her cancer cells.

15. When did the doctors realize that Henrietta had been correct about the growth of her cancer?

She went back multiple times where they told her there was no evidence of recurrence before she went, and they finally took an x-ray and saw the mass on her abdomen attached to her pelvic wall and nearly entirely blocking her urethra.

12. What do the Tuskegee Syphilis Study and the Mississippi Appendectomies suggest about the history of African Americans and medicine?

TSS- recruited hundreds of AA men with syphilis and watched them die even after they realized penicillin could cure them. Men were poor and uneducated and were offered incentives. MA- unnecessary appendectomies performed on poor black women to stop them from reproducing and give young doctors a chance to practice the procedure. Both indicate a history of abusing AAs in the medical field for the sake of experimentation or learning.

47. What did Howard Jones realize when he reviewed Henrietta's medical records?

The original pathologist that recorded her cancer was wrong about its type. It WAS invasive, but was not an epidermoid carcinoma (originated from epithelial tissue) and was instead a very aggressive adenocarcinoma of the cervix (originated from glandular tissue in the cervix).

29. What does the term "informed consent" mean?

The patient is fully aware of all risks involved before agreeing to the experiment.

41. What is "spontaneous transformation"?

The process of a normal cell suddenly becoming cancerous- might not exist and is just the culture being taken over by HeLa.

50. From a legal standpoint, how is the fact that the doctors failed to obtain consent prior to taking blood from the Lacks family in 1973 different from their initial failure to obtain consent from Henrietta in 1951?

The NIH's guidelines now exist because they were the aftermath of Southam's trials, and ethics of consent in general were talked about more at the time when the Lacks family had blood taken

62. Explain the Hayflick limit.

The number of times a cell can divide before they stop growing and begin to die- around 50. Named after Leonard Hayflick.

4. What is mitosis?

The process of cell division

14. What details suggest that Carrel's claims about the immortal cell line were not scientifically sound?

The way that the media ran with it, Carrel literally being a white supremacist, he believed in telepathy and clairvoyance. He kept making claims that were more and more dramatic, like they would reach a volume greater than that of the solar system, that they have already covered the Earth, etc. Hayflick determined it was probably not real.

37. What did Stanley Gartler discover about eighteen of the most commonly used cell cultures?

They all contained a rare genetic marker called glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase-A (G6PD-A), which was pretty much exclusive to AAs and still very rare even then

20. Why did the fact that HeLa cells are malignant make them particularly useful in the study of viruses?

They grew much faster than normal cells, and therefore produced results faster- hardy, inexpensive, and everywhere.

40. Why would HeLa contamination be a problem for researchers?

They had done research on different cell lines to study the behavior of each tissue type, test unique responses to drugs, etc, and if they were all HeLa then all the money spent on that research was wasted.

19. Paraphrase the explanation of how a virus reproduces found on page 97.

They inject some of their own DNA into a living cell to reprogram the cell to reproduce with the virus.

32. Explain how the action against Southam and Mandel led to the development of informed consent forms as a standard medical practice.

They were both found guilty of "fraud or deceit and unprofessional conduct in the practice of medicine" and both were on probation for a year. The NIH reviewed all the grantee institutions they funded and found 9/52 had policies in place to protect patients. Made it a rule that to receive funding, experiments had to be approved by review boards.

33. Summarize the various ways that HeLa was used in the space program.

They were grown in space- went up in the second satellite ever in orbit by Russians, NASA sent some afterwards. Wanted to see cellular effects of zero-gravity and radiation levels.

43. How did the scientific community respond to Gartler's theory about HeLa contamination?

They were very upset about it because it would render a lot of their research entirely useless- people asked a lot of questions trying to find error in what he said.

18. What unusual characteristics of HeLa cells made them ideal for use in the polio vaccine trials?

They weren't limited by space the same way other cells were- didn't need a glass surface. Could just grow until they ran out of culture medium. If HeLa was susceptible to poliovirus, then it would solve the mass production problem and make it possible to test the vaccine without millions of monkey cells.

16. Why did Henrietta's doctors need to ask for her family's permission to remove tissue samples after her death?

Though no law or code of ethics required doctors to ask permission before taking tissue from a living patient, the law made it very clear that performing an autopsy or removing tissue from the dead without permission was illegal.

31. According to State Attorney General Louis Lefkowitz, what do people have an "inalienable" right to?

To determine what shall be done to their own body.

30. What is the purpose of the Nuremberg Code?

To govern human experimentation and keep people safe- required full disclosure of everything involved

44. Why did Johns Hopkins start a medical school and hospital in a poor black neighborhood?

To help those who could not otherwise get medical care. People only charged if they obviously could afford it

23. Why did scientists want to be able to clone cells for research?

Wanted to grow cellular clones- lines of cells descended from individual cells- so they could harness those unique traits.

36. What scientific discoveries were made possible as a result of fused hybrid cells?

What genes do and how they work, turning "back on" cells that were incapable of reproducing, mapping human genes to specific chromosomes, precursor to modern genome.

26. Describe the experiment that Southam developed to test his hypothesis about HeLa.

What if HeLa cells could infect the scientists working with them? He injected cancer patients with saline solution mixed with HeLa in their forearm and marked where it was.

65. Why had he saved patients' medical records?

When Lurz was a student intern in his 20s, he had a habit of collecting potentially historic documents.

35. Explain what happens during somatic cell fusion.

When cells were infected by certain viruses in culture, they clumped together and sometimes fused. When they fused, the genetic material from the two cells combined, like with a sperm meeting an egg.