The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks Part 6

"No interviews," she mumbled almost incoherently. "You got to go away. My brothers say I should write my own book. But I ain't a writer. I'm sorry."

I tried to speak, but she cut me off. "I can't talk to you no more. Only thing to do is convince the men." She gave me three phone numbers: her father; her oldest brother, Lawrence; and her brother David Jr.'s pager. "Everybody call him Sonny," she told me, then hung up. I wouldn't hear her voice again for nearly a year.

I started calling Deborah, her brothers, and her father daily, but they didn't answer. Finally, after several days of leaving messages, someone answered at Day's house: a young boy who didn't say h.e.l.lo, just breathed into the receiver, hip-hop thumping in the background.

When I asked for David, the boy said, "Yeah," and threw the phone down.

"Go get Pop!" he yelled, followed by a long pause. "It's important. Get Pop!"

No response.

"Lady's on the phone," he yelled, "come on ..."

The first boy breathed into the receiver again as a second boy picked up an extension and said h.e.l.lo.

"Hi," I said. "Can I talk to David?"

"Who this?" he asked.

"Rebecca," I said.

He moved the phone away from his mouth and yelled, "Get Pop, lady's on the phone about his wife cells."

Years later I'd understand how a young boy could know why I was calling just from the sound of my voice: the only time white people called Day was when they wanted something having to do with HeLa cells. But at the time I was confused-I figured I must have heard wrong.

A woman picked up a receiver saying, "h.e.l.lo, may I help you?" She was sharp, curt, like I do not have time for this.

I told her I was hoping to talk to David, and she asked who was calling. Rebecca, I said, afraid she'd hang up if I said anything more.

"Just a moment." She sighed and lowered the phone. "Go take this to Day," she told a child. "Tell him he got a long-distance call, somebody named Rebecca calling about his wife cells."

The child grabbed the phone, pressed it to his ear, and ran for Day. Then there was a long silence.

"Pop, get up," the kid whispered. "There's somebody about your wife."

"Whu ..."

"Get up, there's somebody about your wife cells."

"Whu? Where?"

"Wife cells, on the phone ... get up."

"Where her cells?"

"Here," the boy said, handing Day the phone.

"Yeah?"

"Hi, is this David Lacks?"

"Yeah."

I told him my name and started to explain why I was calling, but before I could say much, he let out a deep sigh.

"Whanowthis," he mumbled in a deep Southern accent, his words slurred like he'd had a stroke. "You got my wife cells?"

"Yeah," I said, thinking he was asking if I was calling about his wife's cells.

"Yeah?" he said, suddenly bright, alert. "You got my wife cells? She know you talking?"

"Yeah," I said, thinking he was asking if Deborah knew I was calling.

"Well, so let my old lady cells talk to you and leave me alone," he snapped. "I had enough 'a you people." Then he hung up.

CHAPTER 7

The Death and Life of Cell Culture

On April 10, 1951, three weeks after Henrietta started radiation therapy, George Gey appeared on WAAM television in Baltimore for a special show devoted to his work. With dramatic music in the background, the announcer said, "Tonight we will learn why scientists believe that cancer can be conquered."

The camera flashed to Gey, sitting at a desk in front of a wall covered with pictures of cells. His face was long and handsome, with a pointed nose, black plastic bifocals, and a Charlie Chaplin mustache. He sat stiff and straight-backed, tweed suit perfectly pressed, white hand kerchief in his breast pocket, hair slicked. His eyes darted off screen, then back to the camera as he drummed his fingers on the desk, his face expressionless.

"The normal cells which make up our bodies are tiny objects, five thousand of which would fit on the head of a pin," he said, his voice a bit too loud and stilted. "How the normal cells become cancerous is still a mystery."

He gave viewers a basic overview of cell structure and cancer using diagrams and a long wooden pointer. He showed films of cells moving across the screen, their edges inching further and further into the empty s.p.a.ce around them. And he zoomed in on one cancer cell, its edges round and smooth until it began to quiver and shake violently, exploding into five cancer cells.

At one point he said, "Now let me show you a bottle in which we have grown ma.s.sive quant.i.ties of cancer cells." He picked up a clear gla.s.s pint-sized bottle, most likely full of Henrietta's cells, and rocked it in his hands as he explained that his lab was using those cells to find ways to stop cancer. He said, "It is quite possible that from fundamental studies such as these that we will be able to learn a way by which cancer cells can be damaged or completely wiped out."

To help make that happen, Gey began sending Henrietta's cells to any scientist who might use them for cancer research. Shipping live cells in the mail-a common practice today-wasn't done at the time. Instead, Gey sent them via plane in tubes with a few drops of culture medium, just enough to keep them alive for a short time. Sometimes pilots or stewards tucked the tubes in their shirt pockets, to keep the cells at body temperature as if they were still in an incubator. Other times, when the cells had to ride in the cargo hold, Gey tucked them into holes carved in blocks of ice to keep them from overheating, then packed the ice in cardboard boxes filled with sawdust. When shipments were ready to go, Gey would warn recipients that the cells were about to "metastasize" to their cities, so they could stand ready to fetch the shipment and rush back to their labs. If all went well, the cells survived. If not, Gey packaged up another batch and tried again.

He sent shipments of HeLa cells to researchers in Texas, India, New York, Amsterdam, and many places between. Those researchers gave them to more researchers, who gave them to more still. Henrietta's cells rode into the mountains of Chile in the saddlebags of pack mules. As Gey flew from one lab to another, demonstrating his culturing techniques and helping to set up new laboratories, he always flew with tubes of Henrietta's cells in his breast pocket. And when scientists visited Gey's lab to learn his techniques, he usually sent them home with a vial or two of HeLa. In letters, Gey and some of his colleagues began referring to the cells as his "precious babies."

The reason Henrietta's cells were so precious was because they allowed scientists to perform experiments that would have been impossible with a living human. They cut HeLa cells apart and exposed them to endless toxins, radiation, and infections. They bombarded them with drugs, hoping to find one that would kill malignant cells without destroying normal ones. They studied immune suppression and cancer growth by injecting HeLa cells into immune-compromised rats, which developed malignant tumors much like Henrietta's. If the cells died in the process, it didn't matter-scientists could just go back to their eternally growing HeLa stock and start over again.

Despite the spread of HeLa and the flurry of new research that followed, there were no news stories about the birth of the amazing HeLa cell line and how it might help stop cancer. In Gey's one appearance on television, he didn't mention Henrietta or her cells by name, so the general public knew nothing of HeLa. But even if they had known, they probably wouldn't have paid it much mind. For decades the press had been reporting that cell culture was going to save the world from disease and make man immortal, but by 1951 the general public had stopped buying it. Cell culture had become less a medical miracle than something out of a scary science-fiction movie.

It all started on January 17, 1912, when Alexis Carrel, a French surgeon at the Rockefeller Inst.i.tute, grew his "immortal chicken heart."

Scientists had been trying to grow living cells since before the turn of the century, but their samples had always died. As a result, many researchers believed it was impossible to keep tissues alive outside the body. But Carrel set out to prove them wrong. At age thirty-nine he'd already invented the first technique for suturing blood vessels together, and had used it to perform the first coronary bypa.s.s and develop methods for transplanting organs. He hoped someday to grow whole organs in the laboratory, filling ma.s.sive vaults with lungs, livers, kidneys, and tissues he could ship through the mail for transplantation. As a first step, he'd tried to grow a sliver of chicken-heart tissue in culture, and to everyone's amazement, it worked. Those heart cells kept beating as if they were still in the chicken's body.

Months later, Carrel won a n.o.bel Prize for his blood-vessel-suturing technique and his contributions to organ transplantation, and he became an instant celebrity. The prize had nothing to do with the chicken heart, but articles about his award conflated the immortal chicken-heart cells with his transplantation work, and suddenly it sounded like he'd found the fountain of youth. Headlines around the world read: