Marie Curie and Henrietta Lacks: Two Icons of Medical Research

Marie Sklodowska Curie (1867-1935) was a physician, chemist, and professor, the winner of Nobel Prizes in physics and chemistry, discoverer of two elements, polonium and radium, developer of the theory of radioactivity, coiner of the term "radioactivity," and the creator of mobile radiological units that treated over a million soldiers on the front lines during World War One. Her achievements are so vast and have affected so many fields that her specific contribution to medical research--x-rays, stationary and mobile--has too often been taken foregranted. 

The specific prompt to my thinking of her again was the March 12 episode of the NBC television "Timeless" in which the time travelers encountered Marie and her daughter Irene, who later also won the Noble Prize in chemistry, when they were working with mobile radiological units on the battlefields of France. For a change, the television treatment of these historical figures was pretty accurate. She founded the Curie Institut in Paris, in 1920 and in 1935 in Warsaw, both of which exist today. The former is a leading research institute in biophysics, cell biology and oncology and runs a hospital specializing in the treatment of cancer.  In 2013, the latter performed the first full face transplant..

Marie's achievements would have been remarkable for a male. But, Marie, who shared her first Noble Prize in 1903 with her husband Pierre (1859-1906) and Henri Becquerel (1852-1908), would not have been named in the award  had her husband not insisted, telling the Swedish Academy that Marie had originated the research, conceived the experiments, and developed the theory of radioactivity. In mentioning her contribution, the president of the academy, quoted the Bible's Book of Genesis when God says: "It is not good that man should be alone. I shall make a helpmate for him." When President Warren G. Harding greeted her at the White House in 1921, he said, "We lay at your feet that testimony of love that all generations of men were wont to bestow on the noble woman, the unselfish wife, the devoted mother."

The 1943 movie Madame Curie was supervised by her daughter Irene, who had script and casting approval (she chose Greer Garson over Greta Garbo to play her mother). It pretty much ends with Pierre's death, but what it shows, although compressed and romanticised, is fairly accurate.

The movie doesn't show that Marie's achievements came at a high price. No one in her lifetime fully understood the effects of exposure to radium. Today, a dental x-ray requires the patient to be covered by a lead-lined apron and the technicians leave the room. When Marie met President Harding in 1921, he handed her the 1 gram of radium that had been developed to that point in the United States. She walked around with test tubes of radioactive isotopes in her pocket and worked at a desk that had the test tubes in a drawer. She died in 1934 at the age of 66  from aplastic anemia caused by the effects of radiation exposure. Her notebooks, papers, and even her cookbook are considered too dangerous to handle 84 year after her death and are stored  in lead-lined boxes. Researchers wishing to examine them must wear protective clothing.

Marie Sklodowska Curie should be remembered in the history of medical research for her great achievements and sacrifice.

Henrietta Lacks should be remembered for the gift she shared with the world and what was done to her.

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She was born in Virginia but spent most of her life in Baltimore. She was diagnosed with cervical cancer in 1951 at Johns Hopkins University, the only hospital in Baltimore that would treat Afro-Americans.. During her ultimately unsuccessful treatment, the hospital took samples of cancerous and non-cancerous cells from her and gave them to researcher George Otto Gey. Asking permission of a patient and/or her family was being done in 1951, but not routine and evidently was not done in the treatment of patients such as Henrietta Lacks. Henrietta died at the JHU hospital on Oct. 4, 1951.

Although cells cultured for laboratory research were known to last only a few days, Gey found that Henrietta's could be divided many times without dying and so could be a continual source of research. Having discovered this, Gey sent his assistant to the autopsy room where Henrietta's body was and had her take additional samples from her body, again without permission. It evidently never occurred to them to ask. Gey named the cells "HeLa," not as a tribute of any sort to Henrietta, but because it was his practice to name a sample with the first letter of the patient's first name and the first two letters of her last to distinguish  that sample from others.

The HeLa cells ability to reproduce quickly led to their being used in such medical breakthroughs as Jonas Salk's polio vaccine and were soon mass produced for research use. Johns Hopkins didn't inform the Lacks family that their mother's blood was saving countless lives. (Later, a JHU researcher reportedly told a member of the family they were instructed not to tell for fear of a lawsuit.) JHU researchers came to the family at the end of the decade when the cells had become contaminated and asked for samples from family members to isolate the cells again. But they never told them why. A BBC film crew, however, interviewed the Lacks family in 1998 for a documentary on Henrietta Lacks called The Ways of All Flesh, and the family was invited to a JHU reception When some family members were told that the HeLa line was  being used all over the world, they wandered around the reception asking whom they should see for their share of the money.

I was recently prompted to revisit Henrietta Lacks by a March 12 New York Times Magazine story about women who should have received obituaries but didn't. I first learned about her  in 2010 when I was writing about medical research and read a review of Rebecca Skloot's book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks in the (London) Times Literary Supplement. The book appeared to have been reviewed in the UK before the U.S., and it was easier to order the book from a UK bookseller, which I did. When I attended a conference for a story and heard a speaker mention Henrietta Lacks, I wrote the story and added a sidebar citing material from the book. The sidebar was not published because I was told everybody knew about her already, although the book had just been published.

I was given an assignment to write about her in February 2017 about a lawsuit from a Lacks family member. The Washington Post and the Baltimore Sun reported that a Maryland attorney was going to sue JHU on behalf of one of her sons. This was occurring shortly before an HBO movie based on the Skloot book was due to be broadcast. The only problem I had was that all there was was the two newspaper stories. I called the attorney to ask when the suit was going to be filed, and he didn't return my calls. In my voicemails, I said I was trying to find out what his cause of action was going to be because it wasn't clear from the newspaper stories. The stories had suggested the family should be recompensed for use of their mother's property. But, I said in the voicemail, legal precedent such as Moore v. Regents of Univ. of California, Washington Univ. v. Catalona, and Greenberg v. Miami Research Hospital Research Institute suggested that a patient doesn't have ownership rights in a body part that is removed in the course of regular diagnosis and treatment. Again, he never returned my calls. I did write an article in June 2017 in which I included comments from attorneys about how difficult such a suit can be.

Over a year later, according to court dockets, a suit of the kind announced to the Post and Sun has not yet been filed. It still could be. But it also could be that it might not be possible to obtain financial compensation for the Lacks family.

There has, however, been recent though tardy recognition for Henrietta Lack's contribution to medical research. The HBO movie was broadcast on April 22, 2017. Morgan State University in Baltimore gave Lacks a posthumous honorary doctorate in public service in 2011, and she was inducted into the Maryland Women's Hall of Fame in 2014. Henrietta Lacks has also become a patron saint of the importance of informed consent in medical situations. She is an easily referenced example.

But Henrietta Lacks is best remembered for the gift with which she was born. Like a young girl who was born with a beautiful soprano voice, Henrietta was born with cells that, if properly treated, will not die and have saved or enhanced the lives of millions. 

Copyright 2018 by John T. Aquino