Doctors removed tissue from Henrietta Lacks' cervix In 1951. Those samples sparked decades of scientific discovery.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

(CNN) -- In 1951, a doctor at Johns Hopkins Hospital removed two thin slivers of tissue from a dying woman's cervix.

Cells from that biopsy would later multiply wildly and continuously -- a feat never seen until that time -- and become the cornerstone of research for diseases ranging from polio to Parkinson's disease.

The woman's name was Henrietta Lacks. The cells, culled from her cancerous cervical tumor, are called HeLa.

"Her cells were part of research into the genes that cause cancer and those that suppress it; they helped develop drugs for treating herpes, leukemia, influenza, hemophilia, and Parkinson's disease," wrote Rebecca Skloot in her book, "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks."

"They helped with some of the most important advances in medicine: the polio vaccine, chemotherapy, cloning, gene mapping, in vitro fertilization."

HeLa cells are arguably one of the most important contributions to medicine ever made. And they're still the most commonly used cells in research today, Skloot told CNN.

But although the cells have been a boon for the scientific community, they have been a persistent source of pain for the Lacks family.

Henrietta Lacks had no clue her cells would be used for research, and neither did her family. Decades after her death, scientists took tissue samples from other members of the Lacks family and tested them, never disclosing why they were doing it.

Excerpt from:
A say in our genetic destiny?

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