With all this talk about stem cells and whether it's, in President Obama's words, "dangerous and profoundly wrong" to research human cloning, I can't help but think of the HeLa cell line that has played such a vital role in everything from eradicating polio to early space shuttle missions.
And talk about profoundly wrong -- the cells' owner was never told that her tissue was going to a medical center at Johns Hopkins for special analysis, much less the role she would unwittingly play in the future of medicine.
Her name was Henrietta Lacks, a 31-year-old black mother of five in 1950s Baltimore, Md. When she went in for a routine biopsy, the doctors discovered a tumor with most unusual cell activity: they were essentially immortal. Normally, cellular samples have a limited shelf life in a laboratory. They'll only divide a certain number of times before the chromosomes reach their Hayflick limit, at which point the cells can't divide anymore. This scenario is closely linked to aging.
Lacks' tumor cells, however, exhibit no Hayflick limit. While she died of cervical cancer in 1951, her cells continue to live on in labs around the world. They may even play a pivotal role in developing cures for cancer and aging itself.