Woman with ... Immortal Cells

by *lost* 14 Replies latest jw friends

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  still thinking

  Thanks for those links hummingbird...so

  the immortal cell line , known as HeLa , came from her cervical cancer cells in 1951.

  One reviewer for The New Atlantis , while mostly positive about the book, questioned its ethical arguments about tissue markets and informed consent, and claimed to have found factual errors: one related to the role of HeLa cells in early space missions, and, another related to a statement in the book that says "if all HeLa cells ever grown could have been gathered on a scale, their total weight would have measured more than 50 million metric tons. [5] Skloot addresses this question on her website, where she explains how the 50 million metric tons figure was calculated, saying "That calculation was based on the way HeLa cells are known to divide (specifically how often they double their numbers) and the amount of time they’d been alive at the time the calculation was made." She clarifies that "it was a hypothetical calculation because that many cells couldn’t have been saved and put on a scale." She also says that the figures "were verified before the book went to press by the scientists who did the original calculations, and outside experts."
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  *lost*

  Cantleave - your a darling, thank you for embedding the link.

  I was rushing and only had time to get the heading up. I didn't want to forget as I thought it was an important article.

  Her cells have done much in the medical field.

  thanks to everyone for adding info on it.
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  crmsicl

  I just finished reading this book. Here's an exerpt from the last paragraph of Chptr 27:

  By the early nineties, a scientist at Yale had used HeLa to discover that human cancer cells contain an enzyme called "telomerase" that rebuilds their telomeres. The presence of telomerase meant cells could keep regenerating their telomeres indefinitely. This explained the mechanics of HeLa's immortality: telomerase constantly rewound the ticking clock at the end of Henrietta's chormosomes so they never grew old and died. It was this immortality, and the strength with which Henrietta's cells grew, that made it possible for HeLa to take over so many other cultures--they simply outlived and outgrew any other cells they encountered.

  The previous chapter explains that their is a string of DNA at the end of each chromosome called a telomere, which shortened a tiny bit each time a cell divided, like time ticking off a clock. As normal cells go through life, their telomeres shorten with each division until they're almost gone. Then they stop dividing and begin to die. This process correlates with the age of a person: the older we are, the shorter our telomeres, and the fewer times our cells have left to divide before they die.

  It's in the works to be an HBO movie.
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  *lost*

  Snare - my mum had a 9lb tumour.(cyst) i don't know all the details.

  (years ago, she had some form of uterine cancer when i was a child, and survived it)

  She had been unwell for many months, before she had operation to remove it.

  After it, the difference was immediate, really thought she was going to make it.
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  jgnat

  Nowadays uterine cancer has a decent survival rate (80%).