Ultimax!

Chakra, the Duke women's ultimate frisbee team, just won the Spring Ultimax tournament in Greenville, NC:
8-0 Edinboro
9-4 East Carolina
11-0 Salisbury
11-4 Delaware
11-1 North Carolina-B
11-2 Rhode Island
Woo!!!!

A really interesting story I found in the NY Times. I work with these cells, and I can't think of a lab that doesn't have them around. Kind of interesting to see the divide between the general public and scientists, I'm not sure what exactly to think of it.

Second Opinion

A Lasting Gift to Medicine That Wasn’t Really a Gift

By DENISE GRADY

Published: February 1, 2010

Fifty years after Henrietta Lacks died of cervical cancer in the “colored” ward at Johns Hopkins Hospital, her daughter finally got a chance to see the legacy she had unknowingly left to science. A researcher in a lab at Hopkins swung open a freezer door and showed the daughter, Deborah Lacks-Pullum, thousands of vials, each holding millions of cells descended from a bit of tissue that doctors had snipped from her mother’s cervix.

ETHICS Henrietta and David Lacks around 1945. Doctors gave a sample of the cancer that killed her to a researcher without telling the family.

Ms. Lacks-Pullum gasped. “Oh God,” she said. “I can’t believe all that’s my mother.”

When the researcher handed her one of the frozen vials, Ms. Lacks-Pullum instinctively said, “She’s cold,” and blew on the tube to warm it. “You’re famous,” she whispered to the cells.

Minutes later, peering through a microscope, she pronounced them beautiful. But when she asked the researcher which were her mother’s normal cells and which the cancer cells, his answer revealed that her precious relic was not quite what it seemed. The cells, he replied, were “all just cancer.”

The vignette comes from a gripping new book, “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” (Crown Publishers), by the journalist Rebecca Skloot. The story of Mrs. Lacks and her cells, and the author’s own adventures with Mrs. Lacks’s grown children (one fries her a pork chop, and another slams her against a wall) is by turns heartbreaking, funny and unsettling. The book raises troubling questions about the way Mrs. Lacks and her family were treated by researchers and about whether patients should control or have financial claims on tissue removed from their bodies.

The story began in January 1951, when Mrs. Lacks was found to have cervical cancer. She was treated with radium at Johns Hopkins, the standard of care in that day, but there was no stopping the cancer. Her doctor had never seen anything like it. Within months, her body was full of tumors, and she died in excruciating pain that October. She was 31 and left five children, the youngest just a year old. She had been a devoted mother, and the children suffered terribly without her.

Neither Mrs. Lacks nor any of her relatives knew that doctors had given a sample of her tumor to Dr. George Gey, a Hopkins researcher who was trying to find cells that would live indefinitely in culture so researchers could experiment on them. Before she came along, his efforts had failed. Her cells changed everything: they multiplied like crazy and never died.

A cell line called HeLa (for Henrietta Lacks) was born. Those immortal cells soon became the workhorse of laboratories everywhere. HeLa cells were used to develop the first polio vaccine, they were launched into space for experiments in zero gravity and they helped produce drugs for numerous diseases, including Parkinson’s, leukemia and the flu. By now, literally tons of them have been produced.

Dr. Gey did not make money from the cells, but they were commercialized. Now they are bought and sold every day the world over, and they have generated millions in profits.

The Lacks family never got a dime. They were poor, with little education and no health insurance, and some had serious physical or mental ailments. But they didn’t even know that tissue had been taken or that HeLa cells even existed until more than 20 years after Mrs. Lacks’s death. And they found out only by accident, when her daughter-in-law met someone from the National Cancer Institute who recognized her surname and said he was working with cells from “a woman named Henrietta Lacks.”

The daughter-in-law rushed home and told Mrs. Lacks’s son, Lawrence, “Part of your mother, it’s alive!”

When they learned that their mother’s cells had saved lives, the family felt proud. But they also felt confused, a bit frightened, used and abused. It had never occurred to anyone to ask permission to take their mother’s tissue, tell them that her cells had changed scientific history or even to say thank you. And certainly no one had ever suggested that they deserved a share of the profits.

Some of the Lackses later gave blood to Hopkins researchers, thinking they were being tested for cancer, when really the scientists wanted their genetic information to help determine whether HeLa cells were contaminating other cultures. When Ms. Pullum-Lacks asked a renowned geneticist at the hospital, Victor McKusick, about her mother’s illness and the use of her cells, he gave her an autographed copy of an impenetrable textbook he had edited, and, Ms. Skloot writes, “beneath his signature, he wrote a phone number for Deborah to use for making appointments to give more blood.”

The bounds of fairness, respect and simple courtesy all seem to have been breached in the case of the Lacks family. The gulf between them and the scientists — race, class, education — was enormous and made communication difficult.

A less charitable view is that it might have made the Lackses easier to ignore. When the family’s story became known in the black community in Baltimore, Ms. Skloot writes, it was seen as the case of a black woman whose body had been exploited by white scientists.

Ideas about informed consent have changed in the last 60 years, and the forms now given to people having surgery or biopsies usually spell out that tissue removed from them may be used for research. But Ms. Skloot points out that patients today don’t really have any more control over removed body parts than Mrs. Lacks did. Most people just obediently sign the forms.

Which is as it should be, many scientists say, arguing that Mrs. Lacks’s immortal cells were an accident of biology, not something she created or invented, and were used to benefit countless others. Most of what is removed from people is of no value anyway, and researchers say it would be too complicated and would hinder progress if ownership of such things were assigned to patients and royalties had to be paid.

But in an age in which people can buy songs with the click of a mouse, that argument may become harder to defend.

So far, the courts have sided with scientists, even in a case in the 1980s in which a leukemia patient’s spleen and other tissues turned out to be a biomedical gold mine — for his doctor. The patient, John Moore, sued his doctor after discovering that the doctor had filed for a patent on his cells and certain proteins they made, and had created a cell line called Mo with a market value estimated at $3 billion. Mr. Moore ultimately lost before the California Supreme Court.

As Ms. Skloot writes in her last chapter, this issue is not going away. If anything, it may become increasingly important, because the scale of tissue research is growing, and people are becoming savvier about the money to be made and also the potential for abuse if tissue samples are used to ferret out genetic information.

The notion of “tissue rights” has inspired a new category of activists. The question that comes up repeatedly is, if scientists or companies can commercialize a patient’s cells or tissues, doesn’t that patient, as provider of the raw material, deserve a say about it and maybe a share of any profits that result? Fewer people these days may be willing to take no for an answer.

lots of little updates

1) Australian open has been awesome with DVR - I can't wait for the finals, go Serena!
2) I'm close to settling in a new lab, just a few more weeks before the final decision.
3) I'm going to Las Vegas next week for an Ultimate Frisbee tournament - and we're going to play St. Olaf. I'm so pumped!
4) North Carolina is already shutting down with the threat of a winter storm tomorrow. I'm not going to hold my breath.
5) Last night, Mira was really hyper and she ran from the other side of the apartment into the office, leaped onto the desk, landed on papers and slid off the back between the desk and the wall. Then she got stuck and looked at me like what just happened? Kitties are so funny :). By the way - I believe her second "birthday" is today. We picked her up from the shelter one year ago and declared that to be her birthday.

I suppose I should update my blog...

Much has happened since my last posting, no surprise since that was almost two months ago.

I'm rotating in a new lab, and if I like them and they like me, I'll make this my new lab home. It's a lot different than my last lab, mostly in superficial ways like the fact that the new people work on more of an 11-8 schedule instead of an 8-5 schedule. But, I'm going to wait a few more weeks before I decide to stay or go to another lab.

Also, it's cold here! Who says North Carolina has the right to be cold? I though only the northern states had a right to drop below 30 degrees! According to weather.com we're supposed to break 50 by next Friday, but I won't hold my breath. Frisbee practice is going to be brutal...

While not in lab, I've been doing a lot of two things that started while I was on break, but unfortunately didn't finish because now I can't stop! One is the new zelda for nintendo DS. It's called "spirit tracks", but really its just a repeat of phantom hourglass with a train instead of a boat. I wouldn't have minded a true repeat because I really liked that game, but instead they tried to make it "harder". I put quotes on it because I've had to cheat and look online for solutions many times... The new tricks and puzzles are just so esoteric that I can't think of them on my own. Not that I don't enjoy the game a bit - I'm still addicted, but it's probably my least favorite Zelda I've played. I think I might play majora's mask next - haven't played it yet :). The other thing that I've been doing is reading the Twilight series - I know, it's so cliche it almost hurts. The reason I started it was because the new movie "new moon" was actually pretty decent, although my expectations were really low considering how atrocious the first movie was. Now I really want to know what happens next. It's also a lot of fun dissecting the books and movies with my good friend Debbie.

And for anyone who is curious about wedding details:

theknot.com/ourwedding/alliewagner&davidmcclure



Peace and warmth :)

A new start...again

These past few weeks have been a whirlwind. I finally moved to a nice desk in my lab next to a window and with more space. Unfortunately I won't be able to stay at this desk. My lab doesn't have enough money to keep me as a graduate student, which effectively means I have been laid off. I now must start over with more rotations and finding a new lab. Losing a year of graduate school really sucks. It took a few days for it to sink in, but now I think I am on the otherside. I'm going to take my experiences from the past year and use them to the fullest as I move on. I've learned a lot, not just how to do a western blot or culture cells, but also about politics in funding, politics in academics, and how people react to stressful (money) situations. So, I'll keep you posted on any new adventures that are sure to come. In other news, when is it ever going to stop raining? Hurricanes ruin a lot of outdoor plans!
Peace

What a busy life

As the title of this post indicates, life has definitely been busy. Classes are harder and more time consuming, I have my own research project that I want to work a lot on, and I'm doing just as many extra curriculars as I did back in high school. You'd think after so many years, I would have learned my lesson to not overbook myself. Oh well, at least I'm having a lot of fun doing it. The college ultimate season has begun again, and it's great to be playing with a team of women again. I think this year will be better than the last. Speaking of that, I recently realized how much I've learned in the last year about biology and how much that's going to make this year better. It's amazing how much there is to know about cell biology and even cancer biology for that matter. So now my plan is to find the cure for all cancers in the next six months so I can pass my prelim, defend my thesis, and win the Nobel prize all at once.

Speaking of the Nobel prize, the new awards for this year just came out. I am so glad of who was picked (ok, except I know nothing about the literature or physics awards). The Nobel of chemistry went to three scientists instrumental in discovering the function of ribosomes (they turn RNA into proteins in the cell). The Nobel of medicine went to three scientists (two are women!) that discovered telomeres and the telomerase enzyme. Telomeres are really important for a lot of biological processes including aging and a number of pathological conditions like cancer. It's definitely an exciting time to be in the cell biology field! And finally, the peace prize went to President Obama. I think that is really special, and I'm glad the international community is recognizing him as a worker for world peace (haha, that kind of sounds like a beauty pageant).

Well to all of you Minnesota readers, I just want you to know that I'm now going to go sit outside and enjoy my sunny, 82 degree weather.

fun times with Mira

Well the summer is over, classes have begun, and Mira is lonely. How can we tell? I rarely see her sleeping anymore. She greets us at the door. She "talks" a lot (for those her know her, she chirps all the time now!). I'm glad we moved to our new apartment before school started because she likes to roam around our new wide space and look outside at the birds and squirrels and other cats. Mira has even come up with a new game: in the morning when we are getting dressed she hides under the bed where the blankets are obscuring her. Then she pounces at our feet when we are near. She gets so excited that sometimes she leaps out thinking we're there, but then looks up at us, two feet away. Ahhh, we love our pets.