The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (20 page)

The scientists on the Collection Committee set out to create the Fort Knox of pure, uncontaminated cell culture. They transported cultures in locked suitcases and developed a list of criteria all cells had to meet before being banked: each had to be tested for any possible contamination, and they all had to come directly from the original source.

Cell number one in the ATCC’s collection was the L-cell, the original immortal mouse cell line grown by Wilton Earle. For cell number two, the committee contacted Gey asking for a sample from the original HeLa culture. But in his initial excitement, Gey had given all of the original HeLa cells to other researchers and kept none for himself. He eventually tracked some down in the lab of William Scherer, who’d used some of the original HeLa sample in their polio research.

Initially the committee could only test samples for viral and bacterial contamination, but soon a few of its members developed a test for cross-species contamination, so they could determine whether cultures labeled as being from one animal type were actually from another. They quickly found that of ten cell lines thought to be from nine different species—including dog, pig, and duck—all but one were actually from primates. They promptly relabeled those cultures, and it seemed they’d gotten the situation under control without attracting any bad publicity.

The media, it turned out, was far more interested in a bit of HeLa-related
news that was almost as sensational as Alexis Carrel’s immortal chicken heart. And it all started with cell sex.

     
I
n 1960, French researchers had discovered that when cells were infected with certain viruses in culture, they clumped together and sometimes fused. When they fused, the genetic material from the two cells combined, as with sperm meeting egg. The technical name for this was
somatic cell fusion
, but some researchers called it “cell sex.” It was different from sperm-and-egg sex in several important ways: somatic cells were cells of the body, like skin cells, and their union produced offspring every few hours. Perhaps most important, cell sex was entirely controlled by researchers.

Genetically speaking, humans are terrible research subjects. We’re genetically promiscuous—we mate with anyone we choose—and we don’t take kindly to scientists telling us who to reproduce with. Plus, unlike plants and mice, it takes us decades to produce enough offspring to give scientists much meaningful data. Since the mid-1800s, scientists had studied genes by breeding plants and animals in specific ways—a smooth pea with a wrinkled one, a brown mouse with a white one—then breeding their offspring to see how genetic traits passed from one generation to the next. But they couldn’t study human genetics the same way. Cell sex solved that problem, because it meant researchers could combine cells with any traits they wanted and study how those traits were passed along.

In 1965 two British scientists, Henry Harris and John Watkins, took cell sex an important step further. They fused HeLa cells with mouse cells and created the first human-animal hybrids—cells that contained equal amounts of DNA from Henrietta and a mouse. By doing this, they helped make it possible to study what genes do, and how they work.

In addition to the HeLa-mouse hybrid, Harris fused HeLa with chicken cells that had lost their ability to reproduce. His hunch was
that when those deactivated chicken cells fused with HeLa, something inside HeLa would essentially turn the chicken cell back on. He was right. He didn’t know how it worked yet, but his discovery showed that something in cells regulated genes. And if scientists could figure out how to turn disease genes off, they might be able to create a form of gene therapy.

Soon after Harris’s HeLa-chicken study, a pair of researchers at New York University discovered that human-mouse hybrids lost their human chromosomes over time, leaving only the mouse chromosomes. This allowed scientists to begin mapping human genes to specific chromosomes by tracking the order in which genetic traits vanished. If a chromosome disappeared and production of a certain enzyme stopped, researchers knew the gene for that enzyme must be on the most recently vanished chromosome.

Scientists in laboratories throughout North America and Europe began fusing cells and using them to map genetic traits to specific chromosomes, creating a precursor to the human genome map we have today. They used hybrids to create the first monoclonal antibodies, special proteins later used to create cancer therapies like Herceptin, and to identify the blood groups that increased the safety of transfusions. They also used them to study the role of immunity in organ transplantation. Hybrids proved it was possible for DNA from two unrelated individuals, even of different species, to survive together
inside
cells without one rejecting the other, which meant the mechanism for rejecting transplanted organs had to be
outside
cells.

Scientists were ecstatic about hybrids, but throughout the United States and Britain, the public panicked as the media published one sensational headline after the next:

The Times
of London called the HeLa-mouse cells the “strangest hybrid form of life ever seen in the lab—or out of it.” A
Washington Post
editorial said, “We cannot afford any artificially induced mouse-men.”
It called the research “horrendous” and said the researchers should leave humans alone and “go back to their yeasts and fungi.” One article ran with an image of a half-human, half-mouse creature with a long, scaly tail; another ran with a cartoon of a hippopotamus-woman reading the newspaper at a bus stop. The British press called the HeLa hybrids an “assault on life,” and portrayed Harris as a mad scientist. And Harris didn’t help the situation: he caused near-pandemonium when he appeared in a BBC documentary saying that the eggs of man and ape could now be joined to create a “mape.”

Harris and Watkins wrote letters to editors complaining they’d been quoted out of context, their story sensationalized to “distort, misrepresent and terrify.” They assured the public that they were just creating cells, not “trying to produce centaurs.” But it didn’t help. A public survey about their research was overwhelmingly negative, calling it pointless and dangerous, an example of “men trying to be gods.” And the PR problem for cell culture was only going to get worse from there.

W
hen Deborah was a junior in high school, at the age of sixteen, she got pregnant with her first child. Bobbette cried when she found out. Deborah stopped going to school and Bobbette said, “Don’t get too comfortable cause you’re goin to graduate.” Deborah yelled right back, saying she couldn’t go to school all big and pregnant.

“That don’t matter,” Bobbette said, “you’re goin to that special girls school where all the pregnant girls have big bellies just like you.”

Deborah refused, but Bobbette filled out the application for her and dragged her there for her first day of class. On November 10, 1966, Deborah gave birth to Alfred Jr., who she named after his father, Alfred “Cheetah” Carter, the boy Galen had once been jealous of. Each morning, Bobbette made Deborah’s lunch, got her to school, then took care of Alfred all day and most of the night so Deborah could go to class and study. When Deborah graduated, Bobbette made her get her first job—whether Deborah liked it or not, Bobbette was going to help her and that baby.

Deborah’s older brothers were doing fine on their own. Lawrence
went into business for himself, opening a convenience store in the basement of an old townhouse; Sonny had graduated from high school, joined the air force, and grown into a handsome ladies’ man. He did some running around, but pretty much stayed out of trouble. Their younger brother, Joe, was another story.

Authority didn’t agree with Joe. He argued with teachers and brawled with other students. He dropped out of school in the seventh grade and ended up in court for “assault by striking” right after his seventeenth birthday. He joined the military at eighteen, but his anger and attitude got him in even more trouble there. He fought his superiors and other soldiers. Sometimes he ended up in the hospital, but more often than not, his fighting landed him in solitary confinement, a dark hole with dirt walls ominously similar to the basement where Ethel once locked him as a child. He preferred being in the hole because it meant no one would bother him. As soon as they let him out, he’d fight another soldier or get belligerent with an officer and they’d throw him back in. He spent nine months in the service, most of it sitting in the hole, growing angrier and angrier. After multiple psychiatric evaluations and treatments, Joe was discharged for an inability to adjust emotionally to military life.

His family had hoped the military would help control his rage and teach him some discipline and respect for authority. Instead, he came out of the military angrier than ever.

A week or so after Joe got home from the military, a tall, skinny neighborhood kid named Ivy walked up to him with a knife and asked if he wanted to start something. Most people wouldn’t have done that. At nineteen, Joe was at least four inches shorter than Ivy and only 155 pounds, but people in the neighborhood called him Crazy Joe because he seemed to enjoy violence. Ivy didn’t care. He’d been drinking heavily and shooting heroin for years, and he was covered in scars from fighting. He told Joe he was going to kill him.

Joe ignored Ivy the first time. Then, about three months later, on September 12, 1970, Joe was walking down an East Baltimore street with his friend June. It was Saturday night, they’d been drinking, and
they’d just started talking up a group of young girls when three other men walked up the street toward them. One of those men was Eldridge Lee Ivy.

When Ivy saw Joe and June talking to the girls, he yelled, saying one of them was his cousin, and they’d better stop messing with her.

“I’m tired of your junk,” June yelled back.

The two started arguing, and when Ivy threatened to punch June in the face, Joe jumped between them, calmly telling Ivy he would do no such thing.

Ivy grabbed Joe by the neck, choking him while his two friends tried to pull him off. Joe kicked and yelled, “I’m going to kill your mother fuckin ass!” But Ivy beat him bloody while June watched, terrified.

That night, Joe knocked on Deborah’s door. He stared ahead, covered in blood, eyes burning with hate as she cleaned his face and put him on her couch to sober up with some ice packs. He glared at the wall all night, looking scarier and angrier than Deborah had ever seen a person look.

The next morning, Joe went into Deborah’s kitchen and took her good carving knife with the black wood handle. Two days later, on September 15, 1970, Joe went to work at his job driving for a local trucking company. By five o’clock, he and a coworker had shared a fifth of Old Granddad whiskey, then another pint. It was still daylight out when Joe got off work and walked to the corner of Lanvale and Montford Avenues in East Baltimore, where Ivy stood on the front stoop of his house, talking to some friends. Joe crossed the street and said, “Hi Ivy,” then stabbed him in the chest with Deborah’s knife. The blade went straight through Ivy’s heart. He staggered down the street and into a neighbor’s house with Joe close behind, then collapsed facedown into a pool of his own blood, yelling, “Oh, I’m dying—call an ambulance!” But it was too late. When a fireman arrived a few minutes later, Ivy was dead.

Joe walked away from the murder scene, dropped the knife in a nearby alley, and headed to a pay phone to call his father, but the
police had beaten him to it. They’d told Day his son had killed a boy. Sonny and Lawrence told their father to get Joe to Clover, back to the tobacco farms, where he could hide from the law and be safe. Deborah said they were crazy.

“He’s got to turn himself in,” she told them. “The police got a warrant out saying he wanted dead or alive.”

But the men didn’t listen. Day gave Joe twenty dollars and put him on a Trailways bus to Clover.

In Lacks Town, Joe drank all day, picked fights with his cousins, and threatened to kill several of them, including Cootie. By the end of Joe’s first week, Cootie called Day saying somebody had better come get Joe before he killed someone else or got himself shot. Sonny borrowed Day’s car, picked Joe up in Clover, and took him to D.C. to stay with a friend. But Joe couldn’t get along there either. The next morning he called Sonny and said, “Come pick me up, I want to turn myself in.”

On the morning of September 29, 1970, Joe walked into the Baltimore police headquarters and calmly said, “I’m Joe Lacks. I’m wanted cause I killed Ivy.” Then he filled out this form: