read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

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+# The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
+
+Chapter 12
+
+Henrietta Lacks is dissected, and the inhuman dissection in the morgue
+contrasts with her stark humanity in her funeral and the deep pain that
+she was in because of the tumors (were they prolonged for the medical
+experiment).
+Also: it's legal to take cells from living people w/o consent, but
+autopsies require consent of relatives.
+Her ?husband (Day) consented to a partial autopsy and they took a bunch
+of samples.
+body "filled with pearls" and huge tumors across her body.
+
+Chapter 13
+A HeLa culture is developed: Henrietta's cells grow in a magnetically
+stirred medium and can be transported with little care.
+There is a polio pandemic going on, and the vaccine needs to be tested
+on primate (human or monkey) cells.
+Monkey cells are expensive, so human culture is far preferable.
+Tuskegee Institute builds factory to mass-produce HeLa culture.
+Originally given only to polio researchers but later widened to all
+researchers for $10 plus Air Express fees.
+- Widened research opportunies for in vitro infections, proteins, etc
+Doctor Gey is the discoverer of HeLa.
+This develops the field of tissue culture greatly: how viruses work,
+freezing cells, standardization in the field (same cells, media, method)
+Chromosome count, cloning discovered and perfected.
+Tuskegee Institute superceded by Microbiological Associates
+mass-producing cells and overnighting them
+Gey wanted to move on from HeLa, but he was renowned for it, and his
+colleagues pushed him to publish. He tired of it.
+Gey still wanted some control over HeLa, and had created some
+unpublished research, but prematurely turned HeLa into "general
+scientific property."
+He created other cell lines, but they didn't take off like HeLa
+
+Chapter 14
+The cat is out of the bag: "Henrietta Lane" is released as the owner of
+the cells as early as 1953 (first publicized in 1951).
+Gey, when approached by journalists, denies the use of her real name or
+backstory.
+I think this is probably out of fear of backlash from her family.
+Called by pseudonym Helen L. "Unsung hero of medicine," while Gey still
+has much sway
+
+Chapter 15
+
+Day, Henrietta's husband, had three kids: Deborah, Sonny, and baby Joe.
+After they got tuberculosis between one and four, cousins Ethel and
+Galen moved in. Ethel was horrifically abusive of Joe and the others,
+probably because she hated Henrietta. Day kept what happened to
+Henrietta from his kids, and they didn't ask because they were taught to
+keep quiet. Galen molested Deborah repeatedly, but with their eldest
+brother Lawrence and Bobetta's help, the children eventually got out of
+the situation after six terrible years. (the abusers were still around,
+but Lawrence and Bobetta housed them and helped protect them)
+
+Chapter 16
+
+Skloot is interviewing Lackses.
+Cootie recammends she go talk to one of the other cousins about
+Henrietta, whom he remembers well. Shows her the grave site where she is
+buried with the white people.
+But Lacks Town and Clover are plagued by poor race relations. Most of
+the black Lackses have white ancestry who inherited parts of the
+plantation, but there is also an old constituent of white Lackses in
+Clover who don't want to "intermix" (confederate flag people). They
+won't admit they are related by blood to the black Lackses.
+Lillian, Henrietta's sister, moved out to NY and "converted to Puerto
+Rican" because she didn't want to be black anymore.
+There were lynchings and the Klan into the 1980s, but people claimed
+that race relations weren't bad.
+
+Chapter 17
+
+Chester Southam---"Illegal, Immoral, and Deplorable"
+He, without consent, tested Henrietta's cells on people w/ and then w/o
+cancer, believing that there was significant possibility of risk of them
+getting cancer, under the guise of testing "immune systems."
+He also tested prison populations.
+This was 16 years after (1966) the Nuremberg trials and eventually outed
+by Jewish doctors he asked to help him continue his "research."
+Informed consent was poorly established in the courts and in physician
+communities, but the Nuremberg Code had created a single ethical
+standard lawyers could point to.
+Southam and co-conspirator Mandel only got one-year probations, and
+their professional careers were hardly affected.
+But they did make a long-lasting change to the medical
+profession---requiring informed consent was the standard.
+Scientists warned this would halt scientific research, but it didn't.
+
+Chapter 18
+
+The cell tissue research community begins to worry about cell
+intercontamination and has the NIH begin preserving cells and immortal
+cell lines as securely as possible, and testing for cross-species and
+viral/antibacterial contamination.
+"Cell sex" or somatic cell fusion is a new invention.
+Previously, geneticists could only test plants or mice with high
+reproductive counts and low gestation periods, but now cells can be
+intermixed with certain viruses to test how diseases work from genes and
+the basic discovery of the immune system.
+PR nightmare about scientists creating monsters.
+
+Chapter 19
+
+The Lacks family are at best struggling. Joe, who was most severely
+abused by Ethel, becomes incredibly violent. He joins the military but
+is kicked out because of his violence. Back at home, he kills a man
+named Ivy in an alcohol-induced rage. He goes to court and receives 15
+of 30 possible years when pleading guilty, finds Islam when in jail, and
+becomes Zakariyya.
+Deborah wants to kill Cheetah, whom impregnated her at age sixteen. She
+makes several attempts, but Bobetta eventually talks her down and
+Deborah takes the kids with her---getting a second job and becoming a
+single mother.
+
+Chapter 20
+
+HeLa contaminates dozens of cell lines because it can travel on dust and
+is extremely hardy.
+This is revealed by Stanley Gartler and lauded by Robert Stevenson,
+although many scientists are disappointed by the invalidation of many
+results in the tissue culture community.
+Spontaneous transformation (of normal cells into cancer cells) was a
+myth.
+
+Chapter 21
+
+The first bit is an interview with most of the remaining (now old) Lacks
+family. She meets Sonny, after she was stood up two months ago and he
+shows up two hours late. He brings her to Lawrence, the eldest, who is
+now sixty-four. He doesn't even know what a cell is, since "nobody tells
+us [anything? nothing?]." Day feels wronged by Hopkins for lying to him
+about that the autopsy would allow them to take her cells by saying it
+"could help his children."
+
+Bobette enunciates this distrust of Jon Hopkins by talking about how
+they would kidnap black people to experiment on them.
+This is mostly not true of Hopkins---although it is true of other "night
+doctors" in other cities.
+The fear was helped perpetuated by plantation owners who wanted to
+discourage slaves from organizing and shows up in many black oral
+histories.
+Jon Hopkins, however, was created as a charity for poor and colored
+people, which is why it was constructed in Baltimore.
+However, there were still many violations of black people's rights, such
+as willful lead poisoning, unconsented gene sampling, and Henrietta.
+Lawrence: "If our mother so important to science, why can't we get
+health insurance?"
+Sonny believes Hopkins didn't snatch black people but they did willfully
+keep the Lacks in the dark because, Sonny thinks, they made money.
+There is anger at Hopkins and Gey for maligning the Lacks family.
+
+Chapter 22
+
+George Gey got pancreatic cancer and wanted his team to remove a sample
+and create a (possibly immortal) cell line GeGe. The cancer was
+inoperable, so he resorted to volunteering for random less-approved
+medical trials instead, one for a drug making him violently ill, until
+he died.
+After his death, in 1970, his colleagues released notes about
+Henrietta's misdiagnosis---which wouldn't have changed her treatment,
+unintentionally releasing her name.
+At this time, the War on Cancer is going on, but the contamination
+problem is still raging.
+Walter Nelson-Rees, for the National Cancer Institute, is publishing a
+"HeLa Hit List" of contaminated cell lines.
+J Douglas, a biologist at Brunei University, wants to find out He..La.'s
+true identity.
+