The main focus of "Hela" from Hannah Landecker's Culturing Life is the experimentation of living cells obtained from Henrietta Lacks, a woman who died of a malignant tumor on her cervix. Throughout the reading, I could not pinpoint what exactly was Landecker's argument. However, Landecker seems to provide a timeline that describes how the cells of Henrietta surived to the present.
Landecker begins by describing how experiments are being done on living tissue in order to figure out a way to grow cells independent of the human body. The biologists were basically trying to discover a technique for cloning cultured cells that would produce a large population of cells from just one. They were successful in the mid 1950s when Harry Eagle determined the nutrients that were essential to cell division. After this discovery, Landecker shifts to the use of glycerol as a way to preserve living cells. Apparently, we can preserve cultured mammalian cells by freezing them with glycerol and storing them at -70 degrees celcius. Landecker explains that by freezing cells, we are essentially removing the effects of space and time. As a result, the HeLa cells gained "immortality," according to Landecker. These HeLa cells were then distributed by George Gey to his colleagues around the world. Since Gey never thought of patenting or limiting the distribution of HeLa cells, they became widely distributed as well as a commercial item.
Martin: You actually touched on many of the most important points in Landecker's argument, including the redefinition of life once it has been cultured and propagated in vitro instead of in vivo. After all, what kind of immortality is this? Certainly not the kind envisioned by popular myths surrounding the fountain of youth or eternal life as a whole human being.
ReplyDeleteAnother point to consider is that the HeLa cells are cancerous, and this is the reason for their apparent immortality.
One quick stylistic note: be careful with your transitions. You move from a general discussion of freezing to the HeLa cell lines specifically, using "As a result," and that can be misleading.