Henrietta Lacks Flash Cards Set 2

When did Henrietta lacks die?

1955

How did Henrietta Lacks die?

Cervical cancer

When was Henrietta Lacks born?

August 1st, 1920

Where was Henrietta born?

Roanoke, Virginia

What is HeLa?

the code name given to the world's first immortal human cells that were cut from Henrietta Lacks' cervix months before she died

How many children did Henrietta have?

5

What happened to Henrietta's cells?

her cells were sent up in the first space missions to see what would happen to human cells in zero gravity

What were some of the most important advances in medicine from HeLa?

polio vaccine, chemotherapy, cloning, gene mapping, in vitro fertilization

About how many cells are in our bodies?

hundred trillion

What do cells make up in the human body?

tissues including muscles, bones, and blood which in turn make up our organs

What does the nucleus of a cell do?

it holds all the genetic information that makes you who you are

What is mitosis?

the process of cell division that makes it possible for embryos to grow into babies and for our bodies to create new cells to heal wounds or replenish blood we lost

How do people get cancer?

If just one enzyme misfires, or one wrong protein activation can give you cancer. Mitosis is how it spreads throughout your body.

What sicknesses did HeLa help create medications for?

herpes, leukemia, influenza, hemophilia, Parkinson's disease

What has Henrietta's cells been used to study?

lactose digestion, S.T.D.s, appendicitis, human longevity, mosquito mating, and the negative cellular effects of working in sewers

When did Henrietta first start complaining about a knot?

a couple weeks after she gave birth to her daughter Deborah

Where did Henrietta go to when she complained about a knot inside of her?

Johns Hopkins gynecology clinic

Where did Henrietta live when her mother, Eliza Pleasant, died?

Her father, Johnny Pleasant, brought her and her siblings to Clover, Virginia, where his family farmed tobacco fields. Relatives divided up the 10 kids. Henrietta ended up living with her grandfather, Tommy Lacks.

How many siblings did Henrietta have growing up?

9

What cousin of hers also lived with her grandfather?

David Lacks but everyone called him Day

Did Henrietta and Day finish school? What grade did they top at?

No, Henrietta went to school until 6th grade while Day only went until 4th grade

What was Henrietta's grandmother's name?

Chloe Lacks

Who was Crazy Joe?

one of Henrietta's cousins who was madly in love with her

How old was Henrietta when she had her first baby?

14 years old

Who was the father to Henrietta's children?

David lacks or Day

What was Henrietta's first baby's name?

Lawrence Lacks

What happened to Henrietta's second child?

Lucile Elsie Lacks hit her head on the floor when she was less than one day old. Everyone says that is why her mind was left like an infant's.

How many years apart are Elsie and Lawrence?

4 years

How did Crazy Joe react to Henrietta and Day's engagement?

he stabbed himself in the chest with a pocketknife while drunk

Who did not want for Henrietta to marry Day?

Henrietta's sister, Gladys

What was Gladys reason for not supporting their marriage?

she always said that Henrietta could do better and that she was too good for him

When did Henrietta and Day get married and where?

April 10th, 1941 at their preacher's house

How old where Henrietta and Day when the got married?

she was 20 and he was 25

Where did Fred and several other cousins go work at during the war?

Bethlehem Steel's Sparrows Point steel mill

Where did many blacks flock to during the "great migration" ?

Turner Station during the war

What are carcinomas?

most cervical cancers are this, which grow from the epithelial cells that cover the cervix and protect its surface

Who is TeLinde and what did he do?

also called Uncle Dick, he pioneered the use of estrogen for treating some symptoms of menopause and made early discoveries about endometriosis

What are invasive/ noninvasive carcinomas?

these have penetrated the surface of the cervix while noninvasive havent

What is radium?

a white radioactive metal that glows and eerie blue, it destroys any cells it encounters, it causes mutations that can turn into cancer, it can burn the skin off of a person's body, but it also kills cancer cells

Why was Margaret extremely upset when Minnie left a smudge on one of the glasses?

if anything was contaminated it would destroy the cells that she was trying to study

What is the biggest conflict for cell culture?

contamination, microorganisms and bacteria could easily find their way into cultures from unwashed hands, their breath, dust particles floating through the air and destroy the cells

When was George Gey born?

1899

David "Day" Lacks

Henrietta's husband and cousin

David Jr. "Sonny" Lacks

Henrietta and Day's third child

Deborah "Dale" Lacks

Henrietta and Day's fourth child

Elsie Lacks (born Lucile Elsie Pleasant)

Henrietta's second born and eldest daughter. She was institutionalized due to epilepsy and died at the age of 15.

Eliza Lacks Pleasant

Henrietta's mother. She died when Henrietta was only four years old

Gladys Lacks

Henrietta's sister, who disapproved of Henrietta's marriage to Day

Johnny Pleasant

Henrietta's father, who left his ten children when their mother died

Lawrence Lacks

Henrietta and Day's first born child

Loretta Pleasant

Henrietta's birth name

Tommy Lacks

Henrietta and Day's grandfather who raised both of them

Zakariyya Bari Abdul Rahman (born Joe Lacks)

Henrietta and Day's fifth child. Henrietta was diagnosed with cervical cancer shortly after his birth

Albert Lacks

Henrietta's white great-grandfather. He had five children by a former slave named Maria and left part of the Lacks plantation with them. This section became known as "Lacks Town"

Alfred "Cheetah" Carter

Deborah's first husband. The marriage was abusive and ended in divorce

Alfred Jr.

Deborah and Cheetah's firstborn child and Little Alfred's father

Bobette Lacks

Lawrence's wife. She helped raise Lawrence's siblings after Henrietta's death, and advocated for them when she discovered they were being abused

Cliff Garret

Henrietta's cousin. As children, they worked the tobacco fields togther

"Crazy Joe" Grinnan

Henrietta's cousin who competed unsuccessfully with Day for her affection

Davon Meade

Deborah's grandson who often lived with and took care of her

Ethel

Galen's wife, an abusive caregiver to Henrietta's three youngest children

Fred Garret

Henrietta's cousin who convinced Day and Henrietta to move to Turner Station

Galen

Henrietta's cousin. He and his wife, Ethel, moved in with Day after Henrietta's death to help take care of the children

Gary Lacks

Gladys's son and Deborah's cousin. A lay preacher, he performed a faith healing on Deborah

LaTonya

Deborah and Cheetah's second child; Davon's mother

"Little Alfred"

Deborah's grandson

Margaret Sturdivant

Henrietta's cousin and confidante. Henrietta went to her house after radiation treatments at Johns Hopkins hospital

Reverend James Pullum

Deborah's second ex-husband, a former steel-mill worker who became a preacher

Sadie Sturdivant

Margaret's sister, Henrietta's cousin and confidante, she supported Henrietta during her illness. She and Henrietta sometimes sneaked out to go dancing

Alex Carrel

French surgeon and Nobel Prize recipient who claimed to have cultured "immortal" chicken-heart cells

Chester Southam

cancer researcher who conducted unethical experiments to see whether or not HeLa could "infect" people with cancer

Christoph Lengauer

cancer researcher at Johns Hopkins who helped develop FISH, a technique used to detect and identify DNA sequences, and who reached out to members of the Lacks family

Emanuel Mandel

director of the medicine at the Jewish Chronic Disease Hospital (JCDH) who partnered with Chester Southam in unethical experiemtents

Dr. George Gey

head of tissue-culture research at Johns Hopkins. He developed the techniques used to grow HeLa cells from Henrietta's cancer tissue in his lab

Howard Jones

Henrietta's gynecologist at Johns Hopkins

Leonard Hayflick

Microbiologist who proved that normal cells die when they've doubled about fifty times. This is known as the Hayflick limit

Margaret Gey

George Gey's wife and research assistant . She was trained as a surgical nurse

Mary Kubicek

George Gey's lab assistant who cultured HeLa cells for the first time

Richard Wesley TeLinde

one of the top cervical cancer experts in the country at the time of Henrietta's diagnosis. His research involved taking tissue samples from Henrietta and other cervical cancer patients at Johns Hopkins

Roland Pattillo

professor of gynecology at Morehouse School of Medicine who was one of George Gey's only African-American students. He organizes a yearly HeLa conference at Morehouse in Henrietta's honor.

Stanley Gartler

the geneticist who dropped the "HeLa bomb" when he proposed that many of the most commonly used cell cultures had been contaminated by HeLa

Susan Hsu

the postdoctoral student in Victor McKusick's lab who was assigned to make contact with the Lackses and request samples from them for genetic testing without informed consent

Victor McKusick

geneticist at Johns Hopkins who conducted research on samples taken from Henrietta's children without informed consent to learn more about HeLa cells

Walter Nelson-Rees

the geneticist who tracked and published the names of cell lines contaminated with HeLa without first warning the researchers he exposed. he became known as a vigilante

Courtney "Mama" Speed

resident of Turner Station and owner of Speed's Grocery. She organized an effort to build a Henrietta Lacks museum

John Moore

cancer patient who unsuccessfully sued his doctor and the regents of the University of California over the use of his cells to create the Mo cell line

Michael Gold

author of A Conspiracy of Cells. He published details from Henrietta's medical records and autopsy report without permission from the Lacks family

Michael Rogers

Rolling Stone reporter who wrote an article about the Lacks family in 1976. He was the first journalist to contact the Lackses

Sir Lord Keenan Kester Cofield

attempted to sue Johns Hopkins and the Lacks family

Ted Slavin

a hemophiliac whose doctor told him his cells were valuable. Slavin founded Essential Biologicals, a company that sold his cells, and later cells from other people so individuals could profit from their own biological materials

1889

Johns Hopkins Hospital is founded

1912

Alexis Carrel claims to have successfully grown "immortal" chicken-heart cells

1920

Henrietta Lacks is born in Roanoke, Virginia

1947

The Nuremburg Code, a set of ethical standards for human experimentation, is produced as the result of a trial against several Nazi doctors who conducted experiments on prisoners during World War 2

1951

George Gey successfully cultures the first immortal human cell line using cells from Henrietta's cervix. it is given the name HeLa after the first to initials of Henrietta's first and last name.

Henrietta Lacks dies of an unusually aggressive strain of cervical cancer.

1952

HeLa cells become the first living cells shipped via postal mail.

The Tuskegee Institute opens the first "HeLa factory", supplying cells to laboratories and researchers and operating as a nonprofit. Within a few years, a company named Microbiological Associates would begin selling HeLa for profit.