Immortal Life- Cell timeline

  • Cells are collected without consent

    Doctor Howard May collected two samples of cervical cells, one healthy and one cancerous, without her knowledge
  • HeLa Cells become first shipped via postal mail

  • Scientists use cells to develop polio vaccine

  • HeLa cells become the first ever cloned

  • Chester Southern's experiments

    Chester Southern uses the cells to see if injecting them into a healthy patient would cause cancer
  • HeLa cells are fused with mouse cells to create first animal-human hybrid cells

  • Supreme Court of CA rules against John Moore

    This ruling stated that once a person's tissues are removed from their body, with or without consent, those tissues no longer belong to that person
  • RAND report estimate released

    This report showed that at least 307 million tissue samples are active in the US, taken from at least 178 million people, mostly without consent