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The Suppression of Alternative Medical Therapies 81
The HeLa Affair
The HeLa affair is the story of the contamination of cell cultures
around the world and the corresponding refusal on the part of
mainstream science to face up to and deal with the problem
that presented itself.
The HeLa affair begin in 1951, when the first human cells
were grown in long term tissue culture. The HeLa cells were
cervical cancer cells taken from a woman named Henrietta
Lacks. Although Henrietta Lacks died of her disease, the cells
from her tumor—given the shortened name HeLa—not only
survived, but flourished.
Because her cells were so strong, they were sent to various
other laboratories around the country and from there around the
world for experimental purposes. Unfortunately, laboratory
errors allowed HeLa cells to contaminate other tissue cultures,
and the HeLa cells quickly overtook and replaced the other cells.
However, much of the time, the colonization of other tissue
cultures by HeLa cells went unnoticed, since the appearance
of many tissue cultures is highly similar. Thus, scientists who
believed that they were studying cells from human breast
tumors or monkey heart cells, for example, were in many cases
studying HeLa cells.
To add to the problem of the spread of HeLa cells, many
researchers would share their particularly hardy line of "breast
tumor" or "monkey heart" cells with their colleagues. It took only
a few years for the problems of HeLa contamination of other
cell lines to have reached crisis proportions. An investigation
by geneticist Stanley Gartler found that of seventeen tissue
cultures—obtained from a number of different laboratories—all
were HeLa cell cultures, contrary to their official designation as
a variety of human cell lines.
The problem of HeLa contamination of tissue cultures was
finally tackled by Walter Nelson Rees, who was then the head of
a cell bank at the University of California. Nelson Rees also held
the position of vice president for the Tissue Culture Association
—the profesional body to which scientists involved in tissue
culture work belonged. When he confirmed Stanley Gartler's
findings, Nelson Rees submitted long lists of contaminated cell
lines to journals. However, instead of promptly publishing these
important documents, many journals procrastinated while still
others refused to publish Nelson Rees's lists at all.