ImmortalityThe year 1973 was that of Bobette Lacks, the daughter-in-law of Henrietta. , discovers that a part of Henrietta is still alive. Bobette was talking to Gardenia, her friend and brother-in-law. When he asked her what her last name was, he was shocked. He told her that he had been working with cells in his laboratory at the National Cancer Institute that came from a woman known as Henrietta Lacks. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”? Get the original essay At first, Bobette was in denial because she didn't think her cells could still be alive since she was dead for almost twenty years. five years. He then started asking her a bunch of questions about what caused her death and when she died. She was shocked to discover that part of her mother-in-law was still alive and that the rest of the family knew nothing about it. As Bobette approached her house, she shouted to Lawrence, Henrietta's eldest son and her husband: "A part of your mother, she's alive!" They started calling other family members, they also couldn't believe what they were hearing. I think it's crazy how the family finally found out that a part of Henrietta was still alive. I think they should have gone through with the trial they were talking about,suing Johns Hopkins Hospital for not telling them. A group of researchers gathered at the first international workshop on human gene mapping and started talking about HeLa contamination. . They came up with the idea that to find out which genetic markers belonged to Henrietta, they needed to obtain DNA samples from her immediate family to compare the DNA to theirs. Victor McKusick, one of the first scientists to publish Henrietta's real name, asked Susan Hsu, one of his postdoctoral fellows, to collect blood from the family. When she called David Lacks to ask if she could test their blood, he thought she was doing it to test for cancer. For this reason, Deborah did not leave the scientists alone. She called almost every day to see if her “cancer test” results came back. What the scientists actually did with the blood was look for their HLA genetic markers to try to identify Henrietta's cells. I believe that in taking the family's blood, Hsu should have explained exactly why she was taking it so that there would be no confusion that it was a cancer test. Deborah tried to learn about her mother's condition and cells using dictionaries and biology textbooks. . She kept a journal to write down passages from the textbooks she read. Researching this topic terrified Deborah, especially reading about HeLa cells being used to study viruses like AIDS and Ebola. She would imagine her mother suffering from symptoms of these viruses. Symptoms include suffocation, bleeding from the eyes and pain that can crush bones. When Deborah found out she could request a copy of Henrietta's medical records to find out more about what happened to her, she was initially afraid to do so. She didn't want to think further about how her mother had been affected or treated because of cancer. In 1985, Deborah read an article by Michael Gold about her mother. In the article, he cited numerous extracts from his medical records. Her various symptoms and how she slowly died were documented in the article. Deborah couldn't help but imagine the pain her mother must have felt throughout her illness. In addition to worrying about how her mother felt, Deborah and the rest of her family wondered how this reporter had obtained Henrietta's medical records without their consent. This was not illegal, but patient confidentiality had already been a moral belief for centuries. Although publishing medical records without consent was not illegal at the time, I think the publishers should have obtained consent from the families simply out of respect for them. Harald zur Hausen, the man who discovered human papillomavirus 18 (HPV-18), believed that HPV-18 was a sexually transmitted virus that caused cervical cancer. For this reason, he tested samples from Henrietta's original biopsy. The results showed that she had been infected with several strains of the virus. Scientists were able to use Henrietta's cells to study how HPV infections cause cancer. HPV inserted its DNA into the long arm of its eleventh chromosome, which deactivated the p53 tumor suppressor gene. We talked a little about this process in class. Scientists are still trying to understand how Henrietta's body was able to produce so many cells. Many people thought that Henrietta was “sleeping” just because she had HPV, but that was not the case. HeLa cells also helped scientists understand how and what was needed for HIV to infect cells..