Famous book, famous scientist at WSU

 

 

 

 

PULLMAN, Wash. – Geneticist Stanley Gartler, who spoke at Washington State University this week, is famous for dropping a bomb on a gathering of the world’s top researchers. But instead of inflicting physical damage, this bomb, in the form of a cellular discovery, wrecked potentially groundbreaking experiments of scientists everywhere.

 

The year was 1966. Nearly a half-century later, some of those scientists still haven’t forgiven him, he told the WSU crowd.

 

Until two years ago, Gartler, a professor emeritus at the University of Washington, was well-known in scientific circles for his pioneering work in genetics and molecular biology. Then, a single chapter in the best-selling book “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” (by Rebecca Skloot, Crown Publishing, 2010) made him legendary worldwide. The chapter’s title: The HeLa Bomb.

 

WSU freshmen Mercedes Yanez, Daniella Gonzalez and Kassandra Ortega read the book featured in the Common Reading Program and turned out to hear Gartler speak.

Which is why WSU invited him to speak. Brought here by the university’s Common Reading Program and the Center for Reproductive Biology, the 89-year-old Gartler talked about the book, his role in the story and why the “bomb” didn’t alter the landscape of scientific research as significantly as it should have.

 

“Sloppy techniques are still being used, threatening the integrity of experiments,” said Gartler. “Unfortunately, people don’t like to be told they’re wrong.”

 

“The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” the pick for students in the Common Reading Program’s sixth year, is about the most important and enduring research cells in history – descended from cancerous cervical tissue taken from an African American woman named Henrietta Lacks before her death in 1951.

 

That snip of tissue became the source of the so-called HeLa line, the first human cells found to thrive and multiply indefinitely outside the body. They launched a profitable new industry of mass-produced human cells.

 
Today, trillions of HeLa cells play a broad role in medical research and are used in laboratories everywhere, including WSU.

 

 

Gartner’s bombshell exploded 46 years ago when, at an international conference in Pennsylvania, he announced that HeLa cells had contaminated other purportedly “immortal” cell cultures, calling into question the validity of work done by many scientists, from cancer researchers to vaccine developers.

 
How did HeLa cells end up in other cultures? By hitching rides on scientists’ lab coats and shoes and floating through ventilation systems, according to the book’s chapter.

 
“Just one HeLa cell could land in a petri dish and take over the other cells. One is all it took,” Gartler told the WSU crowd. This meant that, unknown to a researcher, an experiment designed for liver cells or breast cancer cells might be performed on Henrietta Lacks’ cervical cells, he explained.

 
“They thought they were working with unique cells when, in fact, they were HeLa cells; and yes, my telling them this made some people very unhappy,” said Gartler. Over time, scientists began using genetic tests to ensure cultures were not taken over by HeLa or other cell lines.

 

 

But not enough scientists employ this technology, Gartler told the group. Even today with modern lab tools, contamination of cancer cells continues, he said.

 
“Considering that it takes only a small fraction of a researcher’s budget to be able to verify the cells’ DNA, this puzzles me,” he said.

 
If a researcher is examining causes of breast cancer, but is unknowingly testing cervical cells, his or her results could be meaningless, Gartler explained. What’s more, because HeLa cells are also used to study the effects of radiation and toxins on DNA, to develop treatments for AIDS and other diseases and to test vaccines, “it’s critical that researchers know what type of cell line they are using,” he said.

 

Ever since HeLa revealed its hardiness in a petri dish a half-century ago, other cells lines have been developed, each robust and prolific enough to contaminate their surroundings. Most of these cells – like those removed from Henrietta Lacks herself – were taken from patients and then used for research without their knowledge.

 

The Lackses, including Henrietta’s five children, didn’t receive money from the HeLa line’s lucrative profits, and yet they’re so poor they can’t afford health insurance, according to the book.

And so, Gartler addressed the issue of bioethics in lab research. What about the human beings behind the millions of tissue samples being used in research? Just as Henrietta Lacks wasn’t told, neither were they, he said.

“It was the practice in those days, and today the practice is pretty much the same,” Gartler said. “The tissue removed in biopsies and at surgery no longer belongs to the person and it becomes the property of the hospital so that they can diagnose and treat the patient.”
 
Cells from those tissues also can be used for research, as affirmed in a 1990 ruling by the Supreme Court of California. Cell batches are issued names such as “Detroit 6” and “Intestine 407” to protect patients’ privacy, said Gartler.
 
“This, I think, is a good thing,” he said. “I personally wouldn’t want to be remembered for my cancer.”

 

When cells lead to medical discoveries that result in monetary gain, it is a research company that typically owns those cells and profits off their sales.

 

Although no standard procedure exists, “I personally feel a family is justified to get funds if biological research of a member’s cells leads to profits,” said Gartler. But who gets money and how much is a complex issue that will take a while to sort out, he said.

 

 

Just as “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” pinned a human face to a famous cell line, Gartler’s appearance at WSU enabled audience members to pin a face to a now-famous name in a book.

 
“Seeing him made the story so much more real, and what an amazing story it was,” said freshman Daniella Gonzalez who, along with fellow-students Mercedes Yanez and Kassandra Ortega, read the book several months ago.

 

“It’s as though his face jumped right from the pages,” Gonzalez said after Gartler’s presentation. And then, she asked him for his autograph.