Henrietta Lacks - Pioneering the Cure Cancer

 ‘Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks’ Tells a True Story of Science, Ethics and Family

 20 July 2010

Photo: nih.gov                                                                      HeLa cells as seen through a powerful microscope

STEVE EMBER: I’m Steve Ember.

FRITZI BODENHEIMER: And I’m Fritzi Bodenheimer with EXPLORATIONS in VOA Special English. Today we tell about one of the most important scientific discoveries of the last century -- the development of HeLa cells. Reporter Rebecca Skloot explores this in her book “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.” The book is a history of science, professional morals and the human story behind a famous line of cells.
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STEVE EMBER: For much of his career, a researcher at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland had been working to find a way to grow human cells outside the body. George Gey and his team of researchers wanted to grow cancer cells in a laboratory. They believed scientists could study this illness to understand its causes and find a cure.
Dr. Gey tested many different human cells in many kinds of liquid. But the cells always died quickly. However, one day in nineteen fifty-one, his search came to an end. Cancer cells from a patient at the university’s hospital were more than just surviving. These cells were growing faster than anyone had ever seen before.

Bird are dying - fell from the top

Birds are dropping in droves. The thing is, it's perfectly normal.
In recent days, 5,000 blackbirds dropped dead in Arkansas. Dozens of jackdaws in Sweden fell from the sky as well. So did a few hundred turtle doves in Italy.

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Associated Press

Hundreds of dead birds cover the Morganza Highway in Pointe Coupee Parish, La., on Monday.

The natural questions: Are these deaths somehow linked by a common cause, a sign of an impending apocalypse or the result of a common environmental trigger? Biologists say it's unlikely.
"Large mortality events in wildlife aren't that uncommon," says Paul Slota, spokesman for the U.S. Geological Survey's National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wis., which has been tracking mass animal deaths since the 1970s. "In the last 10 years we have logged 188 cases just involving birds with mortality exceeding 1,000 animals per event."
The causes vary. Some animals starve. Others eat toxic food or get poisoned by people. Many die in severe weather, or succumb to pollution or bacterial and viral illnesses. In many causes, though, the cause remains a mystery.