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Directions: Be sure to save an electronic copy of your answer before submitting it to Ashworth College for grading. Unless otherwise stated, answer in complete sentences, and be sure to use correct English, spelling, and grammar. Sources must be cited in APA format. Your response should be four (4) double?spaced pages; refer to the “Format Requirements? page for specific format requirements.

HeLa cells are an immortal cell line that is used extensively for far-reaching clinical research. Consider these cells’ history in the context of the content of this course, namely, medical law, ethics, bioethics, confidentiality, etc. and provide the following information in a cohesive paper.

1. Explain how medical research has been historically conducted and incorporate the historical and current use of HeLa cells.

2. Summarize the medical benefits derived from the use of HeLa cells.

3. Analyze the legal debates that evolved from the use of HeLa cells.

4. Describe the ethical considerations surrounding the continued use of HeLa cells.

Explanation / Answer

HeLa is the oldest and most common human immortal cell line often used in scientific research. It was taken from cervical cancer cells taken from Henrietta Lacks, a patient who died of cancer. The cell line was found to be extremely prolific and durable which lead to its extensive use in research. Biologist George Otto Gey found that they could be kept alive; he isolated one specific cell multiplied it and developed a cell line. (Before this, cells cultured from other human cells could only survive for a few days; scientists spent more time trying to keep the cells alive than performing actual research on them. Cells from Lacks's tumor behaved differently.) As was custom for Gey's lab assistant, she labeled the culture 'HeLa', the first two letters of the patient's first and last name; this became the name of the cell line. These were the first human cells grown in a lab that was naturally "immortal", meaning that they did not die after a set number of cell divisions. These cells could be used for conducting a multitude of medical experiments — if the cells died, they could simply be discarded and the experiment attempted again on fresh cells from the culture. This represented an enormous boon to medical and biological research.

The stable growth of HeLa enabled a researcher at the University of Minnesota hospital to successfully grow poliovirus, enabling the development of a vaccine, and by 1952, Jonas Salk developed a vaccine for polio using these cells. To test Salk's new vaccine, the cells were put into mass production in the first-ever cell production factory. In 1953, HeLa cells were the first human cells successfully cloned and demand for the HeLa cells quickly grew in the nascent biomedical industry. Since the cells' first mass replications, they have been used by scientists in various types of investigations including disease research, gene mapping, and effects of toxic substances and radiation on humans. Additionally, HeLa cells have been used to test human sensitivity to tape, glue, cosmetics, and many other products. Scientists have grown an estimated 20 tons of HeLa cells, and there are almost 11,000 patents involving these cells. The HeLa cell lines are also notorious for invading other cell cultures in laboratory settings. It is estimated that HeLa cells, at one point, contaminated millions of dollars' worth of biological research.

Recently, researchers sequenced the genome of HeLa cells, published their results and posted them in a public database – this might affect the privacy rights not only of Ms. Lacks but also of members of her family.

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