

A Lasting Gift to Medicine That Wasn’t Really a Gift - markerdmann
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/health/02seco.html?nl=health&emc=healthupdateema1

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rudyfink
In case you are curious, the "case in the 1980s" referred to in the article is
almost certainly Moore v. Regents of the University of California (
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore_v._Regents_of_the_Univers...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore_v._Regents_of_the_University_of_California)
).

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timr
HeLa cell lines were one of the first things I learned about when I started
doing molecular biology research. They're truly universal in the research
world -- pretty much every molecular biologist knows of Helen Lacks. That
said, I doubt that very many scientists know that she was an unwitting donor,
or that there were serious class and racial issues surrounding her "donation".
An amazing (and sad) story.

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bedris
_pretty much every molecular biologist knows of Helen Lacks._

Considering her name was _Henrietta_ Lacks, you just disproved your own
statement. ;-)

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timr
D'oh! Touché. ;-)

(Not that it's an excuse, but there's actually a relevant reason for screwing
that up: in one of my first labs, people referred to them as "Helen Lang"
cells, presumably because they didn't know the name of the woman, just the
story of her uterine cancer. Hard habit to break, I guess.)

~~~
bedris
No worries. HeLa cells have become so mutated over the years that they might
as well have been isolated from Henry Laurens.

