A Conspiracy of Cells: One Woman's Immortal Legacy-And the Medical Scandal It Caused

by Michael Gold

A Conspiracy of Cells presents the first full account of one of medical science's more bizarre and costly mistakes. On October 4, 1951, a young black woman named Henrietta Lacks died of cervical cancer. That is, most of Henrietta Lacks died. In a laboratory dish at the Johns Hopkins Medical Center in Baltimore, a few cells taken from her fatal tumor continued to live--to thrive, in fact. For reasons unknown, her cells, code-named "HeLa," grew more vigorously than any other cells in culture at the time.

Long-time science reporter Michael Gold describes in graphic detail how the errant HeLa cells spread, contaminating and overwhelming other cell cultures, sabotaging research projects, and eluding detection until they had managed to infiltrate scientific laboratories worldwide. He tracks the efforts of geneticist Walter Nelson-Rees to alert a sceptical scientific community to the rampant HeLa contamination. And he reconstructs Nelson-Rees's crusade to expose the embarrassing mistakes and bogus conclusions of researchers who unknowingly abetted HeLa's spread.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Medicine, History

182 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1985

Reviews

[Andy · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks" talks about Henrietta Lacks and her family, how Henrietta's cells came to be an object of study and how that has affected her family. This book deals with the other scandal about HeLa - how poor laboratory practices, the fecundity of the HeLa cells, and the human nature of scientists led to the contamination of dozens of other cell lines by HeLa cells, rendering years of studies worthless, in spite of the efforts of a few scientists who crusaded to identify the contaminated cell lines and prevent further contamination. It is frankly shocking how uninterested scientific journals were in publishing the fact that previously published work should not be relied on because it was based on contaminated samples, and how hostile some scientists were to the news that they had made errors; Gold tells the whole story in a brisk 150 pages of fascinating reading.

[Judith · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Conspiracy of Cells by Michael Gold (1986) makes an interesting “prequel” to the celebrated “Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks”(2010). When 16-year-old Rebecca Skloot’s teacher told her that most of the cell cultures used in laboratories were HeLa cells, grown from a fast growing cervical tumor sample taken from an African American woman named Henrietta Lacks’, HeLa cells had recently been in the news, and not for the scientific advances associated with them. It was their role in the contamination of hundreds of cell cultures all over the world that was being brought to light. Gold tells the story of this scandal, the millions spent on discreditable research, the battle of egos among scientists who contested the evidence, and those who blithely ignored the fact that the cell line they were experimenting on were not, for example, normal cells from a benign prostate tumor, but cancerous cells from a cervical tumor. The disinterest of the growing gentech industry in accurately identifying the biological materials they were using is downright chilling.

[Cindy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written in 1986, this book is a good precursor to The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. The authors focuses on the havoc wrecked by the HeLa cell line in the early days of cell culturing.

[Scott Olsen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is pretty dry, but there is quite a bit of interesting information.