Right Between Us: Lydia Fairchild and Henrietta Lacks

Most people think they have known the basic knowledge of human body. They learned from schools about how it was supposed to be. However, an assumption is far from the true truth.

In 2002, American Lydia Fairchild got into a big trouble. She was detected not the biological mother of her two children in a DNA test. The first time Lydia thought the test result was wrong, and she did three more tests after that. Unfortunately, the results are still the same. Meanwhile, another fact was that the DNA test certainly proofed that her husband Jamie Townsend is the father of his children.

 

Lydia Fairchild

Lydia could not believed it, she did give birth to both of her children. The hospital's birth records were disregarded, because people considered the DNA tests never lie. She might lost the custody of her children.

The final breakthrough appeared in a series of further tests in which more DNA samples were took from Lydia's families as well as different tissues of her body. This time it turned out that although the DNA of Lydia's hair and skin did not match to her children, her mother's DNA—and the most important, the DNA of the sample from her uterus did. Which means, Lydia carries two kind of tissures with different sets of DNA inside her body.

 

"Venus" A Chimera Cat

The genetic phenomenon is called Chimerism, which took it's name from the monster in Greek mythology. Organism with the same situation as Lydia is called a Chimera. In fact some scientists believe that it could be a more common phenomenon than it seems. The incidence rate may up to 10% to 15%. In other words, 1/10 of us have at least two sets of DNA in an inconspicuous level. One of them maybe came from mother.
 
On one hand, this envisage completely subvert the assumption that one person have the same DNA in all the cells. On the other hand, could this be a crucial moment in the medical science for solving those issues such as transplant rejection? That is what we are about to find out in the future.

Let's go back to the 20th century, a legendary story of an ordinary woman.
 
In 1951, 31 years old African-Americn Henrietta Lacks was diagnosed with cervical cacer at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Henrietta was a housewife, mother of six children in an Halifax country, Virginia. When she stepped into the hospital, she would never known the coming story.
 

 

Henrietta Lacks and Her Husband

 
 
The doctors excised her cancerous tissue. They left a sample and sent it to the pathology lab. After removing the tumor Henrietta started to receive follow-up treatment, but none of these could helped saving her life. She returned to hospital with a great pain on August 8 and died of uremic poisoning at October 4, with the cancer which has metastasized over her entire body.
 
Under normal conditions, a helthy cell cultured from another cell, could only divids for about 50 times and dies soon after that. This mechanism as known as Apotosis, or Programmed Cell Death, is the way that genes control the division of the cells to maintain the normal structure and function of body. Without it, all creatures will grow into chunks of unidentified things—or at least, the uncontrolled cells turns into cancer.
 
During the treatment, the sample of Henrietta's cancerous tissue was sent to Dr. George Otto Gey, who started a cell line with it and named it with the first two letters from Henrietta and Lacks, so called the HeLa Cell Line.

 

The HeLa Cells

Compare with other cancer cells, the HeLa cells divide and metastasize extremely fast. They live for extraordinary long time, even regarded as "the HeLa Immortal Cell Line". Is this the possible potential of immortalization of human body?

The current problem is, HeLa cells are definitely not human. Neither it's abnormal set of gene nor it's outrageous division have any similarity to human. Also, this would not denies that perhaps our secrets of life is right inside someone's body. Someone who just stands somewhere on the street.

A Person who is like HeLa, her cells were distributed to all over the world for scientific research. She left the world silently, but left her life to the world. She got her immortal in another different form, in all of those labs.

At first there is no any mark for HeLa's grave, untill 2010, Dr. Roland Pattillo donated a gravestone, reads：

Henrietta Lacks, August 01, 1920-October 04, 1951.
In loving memory of a phenomenal woman, wife and mother who touched the lives of many.
Here lies Henrietta Lacks (HeLa). Her immortal cells will continue to help mankind forever.
Eternal Love and Admiration, From Your Family