Modern Times: The Way of All Flesh

Příběh z padesátých let minulého století, o hledání léku na rakovinu a dopad Henrietty Lacksové, „ženy, která nikdy nezemře,“ protože její buňky se stále množí.

Henrietta byla afroamerická žena z Baltimoru, která zemřela v roce 1951 na rakovinu děložního čípku. Předtím, než zemřela, byla odňata některá její rakovinná tkáň – bez jejího povolení – a buňky se od té doby reprodukují v laboratořích po celém světě.

Buňky Henrietty Lacks jsou nesmrtelné. Jsou známé jako HeLa buněčná linie, a jsou hluboce zapojeny do všech druhů lékařského a genetického výzkumu – někdy ve velmi nečekaných situacích.

Modern Times: The Way of All Flesh
down down down they go into the darkness of the grain gently they go tend to the kind Oh typical the intelligent the witty the brave I know but I do not approve and I am not resigned in 1951 a woman died in Baltimore in America.

She was called Henrietta Lacks. These are cells from her body they were taken from her just before she died. They have been growing and multiplying ever since there are now billions of these cells and laboratories around the world. If massed together they would weigh 400 times her original weight.

These cells have transformed modern medicine but they also became caught up in the politics of our age. They shaped the policies of countries and of presidents they even became involved in the Cold War because scientists were convinced that in her cells lay the secret of how to conquer death.

In 1860 a plantation owner in Virginia or Benjamin Lacs took a black mistress from among his workers. She bore him two children they took their father’s name for three generations. The Lacs family worked in the fields. Then in 1942 his great-granddaughter Henrietta Lacks decided to move to the city. She took her husband and family to Bolton. It was more time there was money to be made. She was known to all her friends was penny.

Oh my goodness I don’t think I could top her and it was a beautiful girl I was beautiful myself but I called myself idiot back in them days but he was very very pretty beautiful phase round face and I used some Maha dressing because she’s a dress real fancy I dress good too but she had a husband and she could fold fine dresses and she left pretty things she likes nice things the cells stopped growing but sometimes they don’t sometimes something happens to start them growing again uncontrolled dividing again outlaws pressing on healthy tissues healthy organs growing spreading throughout the body to start new malignant colonies this is cancer six miles away from where Henrietta lived was the laboratory of dr. George guy dr. Giese ambition was to rid the world of cancer he was convinced that the secret of how to do this lay inside the human cell for twenty years he had been trying to grow human cells in test tubes dr. Giese simple dream was to be the first to successfully sustain the growth of human cells outside the body so that in test tubes the secret of cancer cars could be exposed and once exposed altered and corrected the key dr. guy believed was to feed the cells on chicken blood he did this by drawing blood from the heart of live chickens he then mixed it with cancer tissue taken from patients in Baltimore’s main hospital his aim was to persuade the cancer cells to keep growing outside the body each time he filmed the results but every attempt failed after a few days the cells always died then on February the 1st 1951 Henrietta Lacks has taken to Baltimore’s Maine hospital she had been sent to see a gynecologist I just happened to be the one who saw her when she first came in and her history was very simple she had had some inner menstrual spotting and bleeding which is a sign of cancer but it can be sign of other things too she was generally fine there was no difficulty with the general examination but on examination of the cervix by the eye with a suitable instrument I was extremely impressed and I can see that lesion today because it was not like an ordinary cancer this was different this didn’t look like cancer it was purple and it bled very easily on touching I had never seen anything looked like it and I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything looked like it since so it was a very special different kind of what turned out to be a tumor cancer as usual a small piece of the cancerous tissue was cut off and taken to doctor guy I was eating lunch we always ate lunch right in laboratory next to Mouse cages and a doctor guy came in with a petri dish and he said that there was a specimen to put into culture and what he had left me was a chunk of tumor tissue and I took my scalpel like this these were sterile and the tissue would be in a petri dish like this and you just cut it up just like you’re cutting up some meat and then you added according to his formula so many drops the chicken plasm just like I had done all the others and lo and behold it grew Henrietta Lacks his cells began to do what guy had dreamed of they started to grow in his laboratory this is the film he took of their first week’s growth here it was sick she was sick you could hear something out of my downstairs Holly oh oh I can’t get no ease some of you Ernest obey Jesus yep got me I didn’t never hear nobody saying the shared counsel nobody you know that was a secret word one time it be but he had cancer and talked about it and talked about it in the frame these are Henrietta Lacks his cells film six weeks later each cell is now dividing every 20 hours for any cancer it was a record growth rate sounds exhibited the same growth in the test tube as they exhibited in her namely that they were unstoppable and continued to grow in a very special way so was the first human cell line her tumor instantly did not respond well to treatment Henrietta Lacks died on October the 4th 1951 tonight we will learn why scientists believe that cancer can be conquered that same evening dr. guy appeared on a television science program to show off his breakthrough now let me show you a bottle in which we have grown massive quantities of cancer cells as he held Henrietta Lacks his cells up to the camera his assistant was in the autopsy room dr. guy had sent her to get more of the precious cells from the dead body and I was all alone with my petri dish and I walked in and she was all completely open and just you could look in and see tumor everywhere on all the tissues and her bladder was one complete solid mass of we will show you some actual pictures of colonies in a test tube of cancer cells such as those I just showed you it is quite possible that from us fundamental studies such as these that we will be able to learn a way by which cancer can be completely wiped out Henrietta Lacks his body was taken back south to be buried dr. guy kept what he had done secret from her family he was worried they might sue him he gave the cells a code name HeLa ate she LA and told everyone they came from a woman called Helen lay Henrietta Lacks was forgotten by science but her cells were about to become world-famous for the first time anything could be tested on living human cells her cells were sent into space accompanied by two white mice the aim was to find out what would happen to human flesh in zero-gravity cosmetic companies brought millions of her cells to test for possible side-effects in their new products the American military placed large flasks of HeLa cells next to atomic tests they wanted to see what the effects of radiation would be on human tissue and then came polio heal ourselves with a perfect host on which to grow and study the polio virus from this came the development of the vaccine that conquered the disease and polio raised a further question might cancer to be caused by a virus and if it was could it to be cured it was hoped in the 50s that a virus could be discovered that had been a major cause of cancer and a vaccine developed to that virus to control cancer and because he nareta Laxus cells were cancerous they had to have the secret of what cancer was and how you could kill it the first step was to find out whether like polio cancer was infectious two scientists went to a maximum-security prison in Ohio they took with them large quantities of Henrietta Lacks cells this is the versus fashion that we’ll be using this morning and down at the bottom here you can see quite a pellet of concentrated cancer cells this material the suspension of cells will then be taken up into a tuberculin syringe and really injected underneath the skin of the forearm through an area that has been anesthetized with novocaine they were inoculating them with HeLa cells under the skin to see if the HeLa cells would grow and and cause a cancer scene a very eminently reasonable thing to do how else are you going to find out if he or cells in fact to you know spread and cause cancer well why did you volunteer for this my grandmother my mother both died of cancer I believed it wrong and I have done in the eyes of society might this might make a right on it now some of the prisoners develop small tumors but not full-blown cancer the results were inconclusive when they cut out the lower one on my army to see here the top one they call me back after 14 days and it did not have to be removed it it died out in my system so that is they think that there is us but they’re trying to find immunity to it but then other evidence emerged that seemed to prove that really might be a cancer virus Henrietta Lacks was no longer alone in the cell world suddenly it seemed very easy to grow cells outside the body some were cancerous others were normal this is a heart cell growing inside a petri dish each cell is beating with the same rhythm as the heart from which it came out of this original push attempts now proliferated everywhere to grow human cells and many of them were successful by God they had cells from lung and they had cells suddenly growing and rapidly from from a variety a whole spectrum of human tissues I had prostate surgery and since the prostate grow so well in the body I thought well it should be able to grow pretty well in our laboratory so I made arrangements to have the surgeon cut off a piece of prostate that is removed mince it up with scissors very fine sharp scissors in Excel was nice fashion because the finer amends the better you have a better chance you have of getting a better yield of cells in the hunt to start new cell lines other cell biologists turn to their own families I decided that I would try to establish a cell line from the amnion at the birth of one of my children and on the day of my daughter’s birth I appeared with my wife and the collecting materials which I gave to the nurse and the material was duly collected I took it back to the laboratory after assuring myself that my wife and new daughter were were healthy and within a few hours I could look through the microscope and see the cells from my daughter’s amnion then the strangest thing began to happen many of the normal cell lines suddenly developed cancer normal cells lying open in the laboratory would abruptly transform into malignant cancer cells it became known as spontaneous transformation I observed in the culture an island of cells that look different from the from the normal cell population because of my experience with cells by that time I knew that this was what we then called a spontaneous transformation that is the spontaneous acquisition of cancer cell properties by a normal cell in culture there was now a growing belief that inside malignant cell lines like Henrietta Lacks EES was a cancer virus if it could be found and isolated cancer would be conquered but it was going to take a great deal of money help came from a woman called Mary Lasker she was a millionaire society hostess in New York I think this is one of the most exciting still lifes that mantas ever did it’s full of color and warmth I have some pictures here by Cezanne and MANET and Renoir maskers husband had died of cancer since then she had devoted herself to a crusade she wanted the government to fund a vast project like the space program to cure cancer believe it or not a amount of money that’s being spent for medical research is well it’s just fiddling and you won’t believe this less is spent hunting on cancer research than we spend on chewing gum but cancer was low on the political agenda to persuade the politicians Mary Lasker needed to find the promise of a simple cure then one of her scientists friends Mathilde crew told her about the virus cancer fear tinnitus cure the virus theory of cancer was very exciting when she heard of it it seemed to offer a point of attack to the cancer problem you know knowing the enemy is always useful she called me one day and she says Matilda we have to push this campaign for cancer research because this is something the public will be in favor of everybody’s afraid of cancer we together started this campaign for cancer research I’m Bing Crosby and I am on stage that means the show’s bigger mascar and Krim turned to Hollywood they persuaded the stars to appear in network television shows their job was to speak publicly about the thing of which everyone was terrified today I’m 53 years old I have a family consisting of six kids and a wife whom I adore and I also have lung cancer you are nobody till some lovin loves you their other task was to broadcast the confident promises of the scientists it is my belief that we are now witnessing the beginning of a great explosion of knowledge about this disease which will culminate in its complete control even if I’m gone when you see me speak these words to you let me join you in this crusade and let’s make this world a world that’s cancer-free but at the very moment when the stars were promising the end of cancer the cell biologists realized there was something seriously wrong with their science and the reason was Henrietta Lacks and herself it began when a scientist called Stanley Gartner examined many of the major cell lines he discovered that all of them secreted the same form of enzyme it was a type found only in black people the problem was that all the cell lines he looked at came from whites the only black cell line was Henrietta Lacks at a packed meeting of cell biologists Gartner announced the inescapable conclusion he told him folks cell lines that are presumably derived from other tissues in different individuals are not such these are cells from Henrietta Lacks if you think you have been working with breast cells you’re wrong if you think you’ve been working with lung cells you’re wrong and kidney cells you’re wrong you’re working with cells derived from a human female uterus and that’s that and it was very embarrassing and it’s very shocking to many people and there was there was a great alarum I couldn’t believe it he was saying that this enzyme is present only among blacks so ergo this tissue did that come from you you’re white it must have come from black and who came from black it probably came from healeth so you mixed yourselves with HeLa whether I say he’s run I bet I say he’s wrong many of the cell biologists refuse to believe Gartland but for those who had developed cell lines from their own flesh and blood the only other explanation was even worse what Gardner was saying about my daughter’s cells was that they were had enzyme characteristics of a black parent which is the reason I ran to the telephone to speak with my wife and she assured me that I had nothing to worry about I’m not black and here’s my wife Leonard hayflick never he never believed what he was hearing in his particular case because it involved his own blood his own cells it involved really to get down to a cellular level it involved his own sperm and that of the egg of his wife to me it had absolutely no importance whatsoever other than my intellectual curiosity bogus it was it was a scandal it was to put it mildly something terribly terribly wrong the problem was that no one fully understood how Henrietta Lacks his cells had contaminated the other cell phones there was something wrong in cell biology but no one knew how big or quite what the problem was meanwhile Mary Lasker had succeeded with her campaign she had got to the president they’ll ask her maid of cancer a subject to which politicians had to pay attention she would go to to the White House either alone or as a guest at the big dinner until she pulled out her little notebook and she read the numbers to the president how many dead how many sick how much it costs and she would say to Johnson in no time we’re going to discover two more inducing viruses in humans and we should have a vaccine against these viruses you know that’s power and if our from perfectly Sunday our open I’m going to pray far we will find the cure for cancer and I want it done in my time I want to play my party I want to do something about it the loneliest moment I ever had in my life was when I learned that my mother was gone from me because of this terrible disease politicians now vied with each other to find a relative who had died of cancer my favorite half my aunt Elizabeth died with cancer Jesus is 32 years of age she was a wonderful person withering away repent in 1971 Mary Lasker triumphed she persuaded President Nixon to announce a national war on cancer I will also ask for an appropriation of an extra 100 million dollars to launch an intensive campaign to find the cure for cancer and I will ask later for whatever additional funds can effectively be used the time has come in America on the same kind of concentrated effort that split the atom and took man to the moon should be turned toward conquering this dread disease the promise nixon held out to the American people was an end to cancer millions of dollars were to be given to the scientists who promised they could find the cancer virus it was the biggest medical research program ever organized and at its heart with a cell mines but those in charge of the cell lines knew there was a problem with contamination they appointed a scientist Walter Nelson Reese to investigate just how bad the problem was we began to probe and to investigate purposely looking not necessarily purposely looking for a mistake but wanting to know the details of individual cells and what we began to find that was that many many many of these cell lines I mean eventually over 100 cell lines were alike and were alike to HeLa Nelson Reese discovered that HeLa had a power unlike any other cell line if just one HeLa cell was dropped by mistake into another culture or blown across the laboratory by a current of air this cell would begin to grow and multiply faster than its host it represented what cancer was dreaded for a single cell has gone awry it grows uncontrolled and the problem is to become much worse Nelson Reis discovered HeLa cells in places where it didn’t seem possible building 41 was the most secure laboratory in the world it had airlocks and a special ventilation system it had been built to contain the deadly cancer virus when it was found Nelson Reis examined a breast cell line being used inside the building he was convinced it had been contaminated by HeLa but this was impossible HeLa cells have never been allowed inside building 41 water Nelson Reis contacted me one day and said he had gotten his line from somebody who got it from me and he said basically that their HeLa cells they’re not breast cells at all the reason I was so suspicious of its being HeLa cells is we didn’t have HeLa cells in our lair and I really couldn’t see how it was possible but HeLa had got into building 41 in disguise other cell lines already contaminated had been brought in from outside no one knew that these were infected by HeLa but then Nelson Rees discovered something even more alarming he examined what was believed to be the original stock of the breast cell line HB t3 he found that even these were all HeLa that had never been any breast cells at all we had several freezes of HP t3 and we tested every one of them and they were all HeLa cells the inescapable conclusion is that the first cell that landed in that petri dish to grow was a HeLa cell so how’d you ever manage to grab wrestle knows her never did kind of got out of the business very quickly after this happened is she so powerful that I can’t answer one just simply does not know what the Constitution is of HeLa cells one does not know what the Constitution is why it is that in spite of of insults human insults insults in culture temperature changes letting them lie over night on the counter without being intubated they’ll always be a HeLa cell growing what Nelson Reis have discovered began to undermine the war on cancer at its headquarters in the suburbs north of Washington urgent meetings were held if Nelson Reis was right hundreds of the cell lines on which the whole program depended were contaminated it meant that all the research done using these lines the suspect was he right of course he was right and it turned out later you know when we took all the all the cooperating laboratories went back and looked at everything we found out it was right how serious is that well I would say that virtually all of the scientific conclusions that I reached you’re worthless it is devastating ultimately to have done to a wasted three years four years on the wrong cells if your entire program was built upon the study of specifically what’s going on in your cell system you’re working with the wrong cell line it’s it’s comparable to thinking you’re living in a palace and actually are living in a cabin in a log cabin somewhere it’s not just that this culture was contaminated with HeLa it’s that the entire scientific community in one way or another is contaminated with the wrong information with the wrong results and with no advance it was becoming clear that the scientists completely misunderstood the evidence in front of their eyes some now began to question the original theory of spontaneous transformation it said that cells spontaneously turned into cancer in the laboratory because of a virus but maybe the cancer had not been caused by a virus maybe it had simply been a contamination by HeLa could this mean there was no such thing as the cancer virus but then the Russians found the council hours in November 1972 an American delegation of scientists visited Moscow the Russians told them that they had found the human cancer runners in five different cell lines it was the breakthrough while they were claiming they had discovered the human cancer virus that this was a human tumor virus growing in human cancer cells isolated from different organs and they were like five different laboratories in Moscow that had the similar claim as simple as that it’s possible that the Russians had this and they thought it’s possible that they had it politically it would have been two men just thing for them it would have been a true findings would have truly established them in the eyes of all the world that indeed they were the first to isolate a human tumor virus which we were looking for which we were working toward all of these years of the virus cancer problem it was a proud moment for the Russians they sent samples of the five cell lines to the Americans all her visitors could offer in return was a box containing viruses that cause cancer in animals National Institute of Health you say of yi yi bureau’s reward ‚no virus Oh boohoo ly reward seanica Tory’s values here is a bonito Breanna at a machine leave us what vertic corrupted this view say ku ku Nene Bureau setec pushing Russia no procrastinated the water that’s it the Americans immediately flew the Russian cells back to Washington they were taken in great secrecy to the headquarters of the war on cancer our purpose was to test them their viruses and their cells for the known viruses there was evidence that the Russians had been correct that there was a viral reverse transcriptase and supernatants from these cells so they had viruses they did have arts but we it was our job to confirm everything we had been told so the cells were also examined to demonstrate that they were of human origin this is when we sent them to Walter Nelson rates these cells were treated with kid gloves this was a precious arrival of something extraordinary because something was showing up in these cells that was that was a new novel exciting and these cells were going to be handled very carefully and only until they had been examined thoroughly was anything going to be said about them done with them send to other people or anything god forbid anything published on these particular cells because this was a breakthrough and sooner than not the results came back and all of these cell lines had typed a g6pd which meant to us that they were derived from black individuals probably from a 20% of a black population now I knew about Lumumba University I knew that there was a large contingent of African blacks in Moscow did you know I just saw this there’s something fishy here it just can’t be so Nelson Reis examined the chromosomes of the Russian cells he found they were all identical to healer it meant only one thing somehow some of Henrietta Lacks his cells had got through the iron curtain and the virus the Russians found turned out to be no more than a harmless monkey virus she had picked it up on her journey to Moscow then the Russians arrived in Washington for their return visit how did you go about telling them that bad news we’re difficult I recall we had one of the joint meetings of the the two delegations in Bethesda the Russian scientists on one side of the table the Americans on the other side and all the sort of thing we even brought in the scientists welcome nothing Richard worked on this one cell line that they thought was a human tumor cell line producing power it inadvertently became a national and international event because I was clearly blurting out the fact that this was one in the same cell line al biet perhaps different cultures of cells from Henrietta Lacks with the same identical virus growing on them and had nothing to do with some new discovery and this is a slap in the face nurseries of one because of poor chromosomal poor correction on chromosome ipoh perak sure no mark you’re no more film Ianto one smoked identify zero with linear Katerina song dilly blades Aquila that’s nice at least with Ramona Sonja now some jelly blades billion no vomitrocious irresistibly arsenic or even a really nice the boxer mera naam an especially Allen Oona’s believe a vision a civilian erosion approach is America’s Europa may mere material modernity here Maria Madre here in the most stylish nurturing Picasso H to do the ocean for Calais at a press conference the Russians tried to put a brave face on events Maserati Paris your publisher each other mitt me first of all to say mr. senior look start to thank the governmental official exiting our delegation considers this trip to be a very beneficial and very useful sure yeah yeah please intervene I don’t think it’s fair for the minister to ask him to comment on specific individuals but the news had leaked out although the Americans attempted to hush it up although we attempted to play it down considerably the Russian episode was a was visible and newsworthy enough that it contributed to the increasing skepticism about the way the virus cancer program would find the human tumor virus another example of a failure for a claim to be upheld and as a result then people begin to believe there is no claim that will be upheld by the mid-70s those in charge of the war on cancer realized they were as far away as ever from understanding why cells became cancerous billions of dollars had been spent but they had found no virus it’s a political pressure and all of the sort of things set up building up and and sooner or later they came to realize it well the rice cancer program isn’t that great you have not come across a human tumor virus yet and you’ve been in business since 1964 the program died I’m not saying it died a miserable death it just disappeared what had begun as a vast project to push back the boundaries of death that failed the secret of what made human cells turn into cancer and grow and divide ceaselessly remained elusive but the scientists and politicians had raised enormous expectations they had turned cancer into a public enemy and promised to conquer it and those expectations remained the two million American men and women who are leading the fight against cancer I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground so it is and so it will be the best is lost the honest look the laughter the love they’re gone they’re gone to feed the roses I know but I do not approve and I am not resigned but at this very moment a scientific despair a new theory of how to conquer cancer emerged and yet again behind its rise to power was Henrietta Lacks and her cells it came from a new generation of scientists who believed that cancer was not caused by a virus from outside it came from inside from the genes a genetic theory on the cause of cancer said that the enemy is within it’s in your genes so from the very moment you’re born the bomb is ticking away inside of you it’s much more difficult it’s more insidious we have to intervene within your own body we have to be more intrusive we can’t keep it away got a probe and uncover bad DNA but up to this time there had been no way of identifying particular genes then an English geneticist called professor Harris found a way professor Harris fused HeLa cells with a mouse cell the resulting cells the clones of cells that are then isolated have different elements of the HeLa cell genetics it allowed people to try to map genes to different chromosomes and this was a fundamental tool in the development of gene mapping Henrietta Lacks now became an object of fascination for geneticists they wanted to know everything about her not just her cells but her entire genetic history the problem was she was dead you couldn’t study her genetics because she had died so the only way to figure out what she was genetically in terms of all these different markers was to go back to her family in 1976 a team of geneticists set out to track down the remaining members of the lacs family they found her husband and four of her children still living in Baltimore I say it was about 15 or 20 years after she been dead and they wanted to do this genetic research to find out whether any of the kids carried her the same gene that she cared or whatever so they wanted blood so they came and they asked permission to draw blood from her children doctor a nurse came to the house and all of us there the blood tests they did on him they took blood tests from each one of the kids each one of my mother’s kids and they told that they just tested it and see if what my mother had was hereditary I said you’re working on herself and he said yeah he says her cells was still alive and I just you know how you I was he’s truly amazed and he said he’d been working on for years and it like took us by surprise we never knew this and there’s another thing that got me upset with him like is anything else I don’t know and it can get scary when you think about it I mean how much of ourselves is out there you know the new technology of gene mapping gay geneticists a feeling of power and confidence they became convinced that they would find the cause of cancer they would open up the cell and isolate the cancer genes and yet again Hollywood became involved the stars turned out to fund the scientists who offered a new promise they would find the cancer genes and then repair or replace them and cancer would be cured what you’re here to support tonight is something that is somewhat of a new approach to try and identify and understand the basic mechanisms that change change a normal cell into a malignant cell and then once we understand these mechanisms to try and direct our therapy specifically at those alterations their view of the world is that if I knew the sequence of a gene I would know what it does and if I know what it does then I’ll be able to replace it’s faulty operation by giving it something else and so people give them lots of money they give them their faith I believe in them they hope in them because they’re gonna save me by screwing around with your genes and if cancer could be cured one could make a great deal of money the new biotechnology firms which grew up in the 80s seized on the promises being made by the scientists the scientists said to the capitalists we now have a technology that’s going to enable us to cure as cancer and it was more than hope it was a belief and it fostered the biotechnology industry I mean if it was possible to conquer cancer you’re probably talking about the largest market in the world and remember all human beings are equal there’s almost no other products outside of bullets that work on all people equally and so suddenly there was an opportunity to make a lot of money they’re profiting off of her while her family remains ignorant of all the things about her because they take them it sells and use it without permission they have also distributed without permission they along to the family and they also have research you know and one reason because this is a family matter 5,000 genatech the lacs family began to learn more about what had been done with their mother’s cells they decided to approach lawyers to see if they could claim some of the money I would do Lloyd’s uncle I wanted to find out what is happening with herself from my research I found out that they selling herself all over the world and I just wanted to find out who it’s making money off my Moselle I was kind of angry about it I’m mad about it in a way because it was something that no one knew no one knew about the lawyers approached most of the major biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies everywhere they were turned away it seemed they had no legal case Henrietta Lacks had died too long ago faced by this the lacs family decided that if they couldn’t win any money they would fight for recognition for their mother they began a campaign which was picked up by radical black magazines we got a lot of pictures of this around here like this around the market of John Hawkins High School we just want to make them aware whom she was the reason why I think they’re not trying to acknowledge is because she’s black I think it was the other way around she’s a white female I think they would have been knowledge and they know they would know who she is right now the lacs family became convinced that their mother’s death somehow represented a kind of heroism it has been a sacrifice by a black woman for the rest of the world the most famous woman in the world in medical history the only woman in the medical history that holds this title you know to me I don’t think they want blacks to hold that title but the promise of finding a cure for cancer is yet again beginning to fade by the early 90s scientists had identified many genes associated with cancer but these genes are only one part in a complicated sequence of events that lead to cancer the human body is far more complicated than scientists thought the public optimism is giving way to a new skepticism we don’t have a single case not a single case we’re a knowledge of the DNA sequence of a gene has led to a treatment for the disease knowing all the genes in the human genome is in itself not information on how the human body works if you want how the human body works you have to look at the proteins the cell organelles machinery of the body as a whole the DNA information is not sufficient the dream didn’t happen the dream of winning the war on cancer the dream of making a lot of money did happen for a lot of people the dream of finding ways to help some patients with cancer happen but the dream to cure cancer has not and did not are we any near carrying counseling we were fifty years ago no certainly not in particular cases we are in better control of the conditions for chemical attacks on cancer knowing exactly what chemicals to give lives are extended by either burning the cancer out or cutting it out or killing it with chemicals and there are no other ways and there are not likely to be please promise of a genetic counselor an illusion yes it really is yes I don’t know what more to say Morehouse College in Atlanta is one of the oldest black universities in America last October the 45th anniversary of Henrietta Lacks is death it honored her and her family it was the culmination of their campaign for the recognition of their the city of Atlanta acknowledges the contributions of Henrietta Lacks for advancing the medical and scientific efforts for cancer polio and many other diseases and on behalf of the citizens of Atlanta hereby proclaim October 11th as Henrietta Lacks day in our city sign William Campbell the family now became celebrity did you give some response on your your emotional at this time well I think I was part of a miracle because when she’s pregnant with me she’s damn cancer he swamp – um only little outcome I had at that I stayed in the hospital whole year I would uh despite the resolution since then I mean have a clean bill of health and she done you know Jimmy’s miraculous more helpful other people you know she’s oom as a result of the campaign Henrietta Lacks has become a scientific heroine but in reality she has defeated science for forty-five years scientists have struggled to understand her cells and cure cancer but a growing number of scientists believe that even if they understood why Henrietta’s cells grow and divide ceaselessly they could not cure the disease there is a new pessimism in science I can other cause of lots of things I know the cause of the tides but I can’t stop them I know the cause of hurricanes but I can’t stop them I know the current causes of death and even if I can prevent some of the current cause of death I cannot stop death it’s here to stay our flesh is as the grass HeLa will live forever perhaps the dance of HeLa continues they are all dancing out there somewhere along the line and they’re still on the stage somewhere I’m sure the stage is very broad and wide and the curtain has by no means gone down and then the music plays on do you think no it’s stupid ass but out here do you think himself still live it I dunno in the gray oh no I don’t guess here but they living elsewhere they still living out in here – gonna test tubes as a miracle

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