When the class was over, the other students filed out – but Skloot hung around. The cells, said the teacher, came from a woman called Henrietta Lacks. Then, 37 years after Lacks's death, a 16-year-old schoolgirl called Rebecca Skloot was sitting in a biology lesson when her teacher explained how cancer begins, and said the process had been learned from studying cells in culture – HeLa cells. But for decades, while HeLa cells were routinely being used in laboratories around the world, and were being hailed as pivotal in breakthrough after breakthrough, no one seems to have stopped to think about the person behind them. No one would be more surprised to know this than Lacks (who, in her lifetime, stood about five feet tall). And there are certainly plenty of HeLa cells to go round, these days: one researcher has estimated that if you laid them all end-to-end, they'd wrap around the planet at least three times. And all this – and much, much more – has led to hundreds, if not thousands, of new pieces of knowledge, and helped to shape the way medicine moved in the second half of the 20th century and the first decade of this one. In the years since 1951, HeLa cells have been exposed to endless toxins and infections they've been zapped by radiation, and tested with countless drugs. What's more, it was possible to expose the cells to conditions that wouldn't have been ethical if they were inside a human body – for example, doctors could bombard them with carcinogens, and watch the results. For a start, having living cells available outside the human body meant doctors could watch cell division taking place, and could also see how viruses behaved inside the cells. (Ordinary cells taken from a human body and kept in a lab have a limited life span however, an immortal cell line is cultured in a particular way so it has the ability to proliferate indefinitely.) Quite why hers were the cells that survived and reproduced, when those of hundreds of other patients had died, is unclear – but the best guess is that the reason was linked to the ferocity of her tumour, which seems to have been made more virulent by the fact that she also suffered from syphilis.Īs soon as it was clear that HeLa would continue to reproduce, all kinds of research and experiments suddenly became possible. Lacks's were the first that "took", introducing a constantly reproducing line of cells that are literally, to give them their scientific definition, immortal. Scientists at the hospital where she died, Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, had been working for years to try to start a continuously reproducing cell line – but the cells always died. Conclusion: Although graduate students in the public health discipline were well aware of health inequalities, a seminar course surrounding a popular book about Henrietta Lacks afforded students a more concrete understanding for why and how race and racism in health disparities exist.Lacks's cells – known as HeLa, using the first two letters of each of her names – became the first immortal human cell line in history. Specifically, students in the intervention group showed deeper perceptions about health inequalities with a particular focus on racial disparities. All students were aware of health disparities over the course of the 10-week class however, significant traction was gained on more complex issues linked to the social determinants of health. ![]() Results: A thematic analysis uncovered more profound changes in the perceptions of the intervention group. ![]() A total of 14 students were assigned to an intervention (book-based seminar course Cohort A) and 3 students acted as the non-intervention group (Cohort B) over a study period of 10 weeks. Method: A qualitative, pre/post-test study design assessed the perceptions of 17 Master's of Public Health students on topics of health disparities and medical ethics. However, the multiple pedagogic impacts of this book on the public health classroom setting have yet to be comprehensively explored. Objective: "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot is an award-winning biography engaging its readers on important topics ranging from race, science and ethics to the social determinants of health.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |