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Henrietta felt a knot in her side and when she got it checked out she found out she had cervical cancer. When she went back to Johns Hopkins for treatment they sliced two small areas of cervical tissue to send to Dr. Gey. He examined them and saw that Henrietta's cells were the first to continue multiplying outside of the body. They labeled them "HeLa". -
Henrietta's cancer only got worse and only months after her first checkup she ended up passing away. Henrietta didn't even have an obituary written for her, however her cells were growing fame. People even began a pseudonym "Helen Lane" that was the "identity" behind the HeLa cells. -
The HeLa factory was made to help develop a polio vaccine. Similar to Covid-19 the widespread of polio caused schools to close and public panic. Therefore a vaccine was especially needed. -
Cloning cells helped with tons of research because a lot requires growing single cells. -
Southam had the thought that people that are injected with HeLa cells might get cancer from it. In order to test this he injected a dozen women (that already had cancer) with HeLa cells and they grew small tumors at the injection sight. This made HeLa injection highly dangerous. -
Southam was found guilty of unprofessional conduct. Stricter guidelines are required for human research subjects. -
Fusing animal and human cells together helped researchers to study genes and how they function. -
Geneticist Gartler noted that peoples normal cells were not randomly becoming cancerous it was actually just the HeLa cells taking over. They had contaminated many cell lines.
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Scientists injected HeLa cells with Tuberculosis to see how it reacted in the cells. This helped them understand how TB effects human cells.
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Henrietta Lacks was correctly identified in print as a tribute to George Gey. -
Researchers wanted to get cells from Henrietta's children to test their cells for similar traits to their mothers. -
Henrietta's family was finally told that her cells were still alive.
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Biologists injected HeLa cells with HIV, then studied it which allows them to understand how the disease effects cells.
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Virologist, Harald zur Hausen saw HeLa cells were infected with HPV, so that led to his belief that it lead to cervical cancer. Which this led to more research that later developed the HPV vaccine.