Feb 2, 2010: Henrietta Lacks

[Adak]

I asked some cancer researchers just that question. They said it would be alright for you to come and find out.

Sometimes they have such a practical way of thinking!

Your appointment is at 10 a.m. on Friday.

Seriously, this kind of stuff always scares the beejesus out of me. Just let something like that get out, and have it be

1) highly contagious, and

2) quickly fatal

and you're looking at a real threat to our species.

[Pie]

Originally Posted by Adak

Seriously, this kind of stuff always scares the beejesus out of me. Just let something like that get out, and have it be

1) highly contagious, and
2) quickly fatal

and you're looking at a real threat to our species.

Most human immune systems would be able to contain the HeLa cells. They are sufficiently different from our genetic makeup that they would be spotted as intruders and killed off.

Petri dishes and other growth media don't have immune systems.

ETA: they have been worked with since the 1950s when protocols were far laxer, and are considered Biosafety level 2 materials. If these were going to get out of control in the human population, it would have happened a long time ago.

Fight FUD!

ETA2: They have a different number of chromosomes that the standard human. Some researchers have postulated that it is in fact a new species: Helacyton gartleri. Amazing!


ETA3: from MeFi:

Originally Posted by ubersturm

I did a bunch of research on this - a needlestick left me wondering what would have happened if I'd been working with live cells like HeLa. As far as I have been able to tell, there aren't any documented cases of HeLa cells causing a tumor in another living person. Most of the cases of human cancer transmission have either involved close relatives (meaning that the body is more likely to incorrectly read the foreign tumor cells as its own, and fail to mount an immune response against them) or people with suppressed immune systems (especially recipients of donated organs.) There are some cases of mother-to-fetus transmission recorded as well. Henri Vadon is one of the few cases I've been able to find where an unrelated person with a non-compromised immune system got cancer from someone else. Additionally, all these reports involve pretty direct exposure to the living tumor in the person with the original cancer (or samples of the cancer/infected organs); I haven't seen any reports of transmission via cancer strains cultured in lab.