Chapter 13: The HeLa Factory

Not long after Henrietta died plans for a HeLa factory began. A mass production of cells was needed in order to test the polio vaccine made by Jonas Salk. At this time polio was an epidemic and was spreading quickly. In fact, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was paralyzed by polio himself, established The National Foundation for Infantile Parakysis (NFIP) in order to conduct the largest field trial ever to test the polio vaccine. Salk needed to inoculate 2 million children and the NFIP would test their blood to see if they were immune, but to do that millions of neutralization tests would needed to be done. They needed cells to do this, HeLa cells. HeLa cells grew at an intense rate and could grow in suspension of a culture medium so they were perfect for the job. Gey improved his shipping methods and ended up finding a way to ship cells through the mail, the first time it was ever successfully done. After that William Scherer developed a factory of HeLa cells at Tuskegee Institute. With help from all of the scientists and technicians they proved that the polio vaccine worked. Ironically most of those techs were black women and they proved the vaccine worked during the same time that the Tuskegee syphilis studies were going on. HeLa cells were spreading everywhere. They were used to find how viruses act and how they reprogram cells, which pretty much launched the field of virology. Using HeLa scientists found effective ways of freezing cells which opened the doors for so many things from shipping overseas to observing different cell stages. Soon after that they standardized the field of tissue culture and made the culture media, the equipment and the cells available to any scientist. From Henrietta's cells they were able to clone cells which lead to advances that made cloning whole animals, isolating stem cells, and in vitro fertilization possible. Her cells even lead to the discovery of 46 chromosomes in normal human cells which made it possible to identify genetic disorders. Along with the demand for HeLa cells the owner of Microbiological Associates,, Samuel Reader, opened his own industrial-scale cell distribution center, making a multibillion dollar industry from selling human biological materials. HeLa cells were used by cosmetic and pharmaceutical companies, to test the effects of steroids, chemotherapy drugs, hormones, vitamins, environmental stress and were infected with tuberculosis, salmonella, and bacterium that cause things such as vaginitis. As great as the cells were doing, Gey got annoyed by the spread of HeLa cells and that they weren't in his control anymore. His wife and assistants wrote his papers for him because he couldn't escape HeLa, going to laboratories to describe his techniques and to direct new scientists. His colleague told him that he shouldn't have made HeLa 'general scientific property' if he didn't want this type of thing to happen. But since HeLa was 'general scientific property' people started to wonder about the woman they came from.