One minute with... Rebecca Skloot

摘要

She was a poor African-American tobacco farmer from southern Virginia. In 1951 she was diagnosed with cervical cancer. Without her knowledge, her doctor took a piece of her tumour and sent it to George Gey, who was head of tissue culture research at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Gey had been trying to grow human cells for decades and it had never worked. Henrietta's cells became the first immortal cell line ever grown in culture, which means they live indefinitely in laboratories as long as you feed them and keep them warm. Henrietta died a few months later.