"In 1951, 31 year old Henrietta Lacks visited the John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, complaining of abnormal bleeding and the feeling of a lump in her cervix. John Hopkins was her only viable choice since it was the only hospital nearby that treated black patients. (Crownsville State Hospital at the time was the Hospital for the Negro Insane.) Doctors found a nickel-sized tumor in her cervix, Stage 1 cervical cancer. Doctors began the normal treatment, sewing radium packets insider her cervix to help shrink the tumor. While Henrietta was under anesthetic, Doctor George O. Gey and his assistant Mary Kubicek, took samples from the cancer and the tissue around it to try and grow the cells in a petri dish" (What's the Body Worth). "She really didn't know what was being done to her at all. She didn't know much about her treatment, and that was pretty standard at the time too. They called it benevolent deception"(Immortal). During this time, Dr. Gey was taking cancer cells from every patient that came to John's Hopkins, hoping to find the one cell that would be able to grow continuously, without dying. He was offered this "job" by Richard TeLinde who, at the time, was one of the top cervical cancer experts.
"On August 8, 1951, she developed severe abdominal pain and was admitted to the John's Hopkins Hospital. Because of failure to void urine, a ureteral catheterization was placed and unsuccessfully attempted several times. Diathermy therapy was tried without positive affect"(Henrietta Lacks). "She was exposed to hundreds of milligrams of radium, eventually turning her whole stomach black with burns as the cancer spread throughout her body. The hospital was forced to strap her to the bed and place wooden spoons and pillows in her mouth during and after she received treatment because of how terrible the pain had become." "Her doctors tried in vain to ease her suffering. "Demerol does not seem to touch the pain," one wrote, so he tried morphine. "This doesn't help to much either." He gave her Dromoran. "This stuff works," he wrote. But not for long. Eventually one of her doctors tried injecting pure alcohol straight into her spine. "Alcohol injections ended in failure." New tumors seemed to appear daily- on her lymph nodes, hip bones, inside her kidneys and lower body. She spent most days with a fever of 105 degrees" (The Immortal Life). By September, Henrietta's body was almost entirely taken over by tumors. They'd grown on her diaphragm, her bladder and her lungs. They'd blocked her intestines and made her body swell like she was six months pregnant. Henrietta Lacks died at 12:15 am on October 4, 1951.
"The official cause of Henrietta's death was terminal uremia: blood poisoning from the buildup of toxins normally flushed out of the body in urine. The tumors had completely blocked her urethra, leaving her doctors unable to pass a catheter into her bladder to empty it. Tumors the size of baseballs had nearly replaced her kidneys, bladder, ovaries and uterus. And her other organs were so covered in small white tumors it looked as if someone had filled her with pearls" (The Immortal Life).
Video presented by http://vimeo.com/9581140
Photo (top) HeLa Cells
(Immortal Life of Henrietta lacks) |
"Henrietta Lacks' cervical cancer biopsy supplied tissue to the pathology department for clinical evaluation and to the Tissue Culture Laboratory in the Department of Surgery at The Johns Hopkins Hospital for research purposes. George Gey, MD, was director of the laboratory and had already spent many years at Johns Hopkins as a student and faculty member. Other prominent scientist were Ross Harrison, MD, PhD, and Warren Lewis, MD"(Archives).
|
"Dr. George O. Gey, 71, Director of the Finney-Howell Cancer Research Laboratory at the John's Hopkins Hospital, and Emeritus Associate Professor of Surgery, died of cancer on November 8, 1970. Born in Pittsburgh, July 6, 1899, he received his B.S. from the University of Pittsburg in 1921, and later served as Instructor of Zoology"(Hanks). Photo brought to you by https://perdindirindina.wordpress.com/category/misteri/
|