A scientific misunderstanding, perhaps

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/health/02seco.html

I have a problem with this article.

It's mostly that I feel the author of the article, and quite possibly the author of the book, are viewing Ms. Lacks as a victim of something other than cancer, that by the pure virtue of her cancer cells surviving and doing things to advance medicine, something terrible has happened. And that terrible thing was led by the cold-blooded scientists in white lab coats, without a shred of sympathy for the poor man's plight, only looking to create a product that can be sold as a drug and thus make money.

See, as a scientist, that offends me.

As a biologist, I know a thing or two about cells. In fact, my college major could have been classified as having a concentration in cell biology. My thesis was part cell biology. Cells are kindof important. But small numbers of cells are not that important to you as a being.

Think about it. There are trillions of cells in your body. Scratch your skin - there go thousands of them. Do you miss them? No. So why does this matter?

Ms. Lacks died of incredibly invasive and aggressive cervical cancer. Once she's dead, she's got no need for those cells. In fact, I think that she would want them gone - after all, that was the whole purpose of the treatment, right? And in the course of treatment, there are biopsies completed - and now the doctors and researchers have these cells. This is standard practice, and yes, there are consent forms now before patients go on trials where they KNOW that their samples will go to research. Researchers like myself use the samples, do some experiments, learn information, and try to advance scientific knowledge.

OH but wait - there have been medical breakthroughs using these cells! Breakthroughs that thus created millions of dollars. NOW there's a difference - now there's money involved!! So of course the family wants in on the profits - they were created using Ms. Lacks' cells, so she deserves a cut!!

Bad news folks - they were created using Ms. Lacks' cancer cells. Cancer cells have mutated DNA, and since this is cervical cancer we are talking about, probably HPV infection as well. And now we enter the tricky realm of DNA - when it is still mine?

My personal opinion is that DNA has been over-glorified, where people are placing too much importance on a "unique" sequence that is so elegant, when in reality it's a messy, mostly nonsense strand of nucleic acids. There is not that much variance between us and other primates, not to mention us and other humans. The basic form is the same, just a couple of little letter differences that creates the differences that we see in each other. Sometimes - other times that's based on other influences, but I'll talk about that later.

Cancer cells are inherently immortal - that's the whole point, why they thrive, why it's so hard to kill them without killing good cells in your body, why we have to resort to things like chemotherapy and radiation treatments. If it wasn't this cancer that led to the discovery of indefinite cell lines, then another cancer would have. There was nothing exceedingly special about Ms. Lacks' cells - she was just in the right place and the right time with the right type of tumor (although not for her).

So, family of Ms. Lacks - relish in the fact that while your mother died too young, she provided a contribution to science that is ongoing, that future contributions will continue to advance scientific knowledge, and quit thinking that there is a monetary remuneration required.