HM And HeLa – Letters You May Wish To Learn More About
March 3, 2020 at 3:12 a.m.
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Unfortunately, anyone who is unaware about acronyms is out of touch with the times. One acronym I do find interesting is HeLa, it stands for Henrietta Lacks and is the code name given to the world’s first immortal human cancer cells.
They came from cervical cells removed from Henrietta Lacks just months before she died at age 31. These cells became instrumental in developing the most important cell lines in medical research.
According to Rebecca Skloot, in her book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, that “if you could pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, they would weigh more than 50 million metric tons - an inconceivable number given that an individual cell weighs almost nothing.”
Another scientist calculated that if you could lay all HeLa cells ever grown end to end, they would wrap around the Earth at least three times, spanning more than 350 million feet. (Skloot’s book was on the best seller list for years.)
Before Henrietta died, the surgeon took samples of her tumor and put them in a petri dish. Scientists had been trying to keep human cells alive in culture for decades, but all of the cells eventually died. Henrietta’s cells were different; they reproduced an entire generation every 24 hours, and they never stopped. Her cells were part of research into the genes that cause cancer and those that suppress it; they have helped develop drugs for treating herpes, leukemia, influenza, hemophilia and Parkinson’s disease; and been used to study lactose digestion, sexually transmitted diseases, appendicitis, human longevity, mosquito mating and the negative cellular effects of working in sewers.
I am also intrigued by the persistent use of initials in medical reporting, the result of the need to maintain a patient’s privacy.
One set of interest is HM, which stands for Henry Molaison. He is known by thousands of psychology students. HM had been knocked down by a bicycle accident at the age of 7 and began to have minor seizures at 9 and major seizures at 16. By the time he was 27, he became incapacitated by his seizures, despite high doses of anticonvulsant medication. In 1953, he underwent a bilateral medial temporal-lobe resection, an experimental brain operation intended to alleviate the severe epilepsy he had faced since childhood.
The procedure used for Henry had been previously carried in psychotic patients, and the surgery was performed with the approval of the patient and his family. The operation did control his seizures, but with an unanticipated and devastating consequence consequence—an extreme amnesia that robbed Henry of the ability to form new memories and, in doing so, determined the course of the rest of his life.
For almost six decades, the scientists who studied Henry kept his name hidden away. When they wrote about him they were always careful not to reveal too much, for fear that outsiders might find him, and they were successful. There wasn’t a single paper, out of the hundreds that chronicled in great detail the experiments performed on Henry during the 55 years between his operation and his death, that contained anything but the vaguest biographical information about Henry himself. Work with HM has established fundamental principles about how the memory functions are organized in the brain.
As mentioned above, HM is likely the most studied individual in the history of neuroscience. Interest in his case can be attributed to a number of factors, including the unusual purity and severity of the memory impairment, its stability and its well-described anatomical basis. Because HM was the first well studied patient with amnesia, he became the yardstick against which other patients with memory impairment would be compared. The study of HM established the key principles about how memory is organized that continue to guide the discipline.
There are two very interesting books that describe Henry’s unique life. One written by Suzanne Corkin is entitled Permanent Present Tense, the other authored by Luke Dittrich is simply, Patient H.M.
Final Thoughts
Progress in medicine is indebted to countless individuals, but much of the credit must be shared with both Henry Molaison and Henrietta Lacks. They achieved fame under extremely different circumstances. Henrietta was not aware of her contribution as she had long passed away, whereas Henry had lost the ability to recall his.
Max Sherman is a medical writer and pharmacist retired from the medical device industry. He has taught college courses on regulatory and compliance issues at Ivy Tech, Grace College and Butler University. Sherman has an unquenchable thirst for knowledge on all levels. Eclectic Science, the title of his column, touches on famed doctors and scientists, human senses, aging, various diseases, and little-known facts about many species, including their contributions to scientific research. He can be reached by email at [email protected].
Unfortunately, anyone who is unaware about acronyms is out of touch with the times. One acronym I do find interesting is HeLa, it stands for Henrietta Lacks and is the code name given to the world’s first immortal human cancer cells.
They came from cervical cells removed from Henrietta Lacks just months before she died at age 31. These cells became instrumental in developing the most important cell lines in medical research.
According to Rebecca Skloot, in her book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, that “if you could pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, they would weigh more than 50 million metric tons - an inconceivable number given that an individual cell weighs almost nothing.”
Another scientist calculated that if you could lay all HeLa cells ever grown end to end, they would wrap around the Earth at least three times, spanning more than 350 million feet. (Skloot’s book was on the best seller list for years.)
Before Henrietta died, the surgeon took samples of her tumor and put them in a petri dish. Scientists had been trying to keep human cells alive in culture for decades, but all of the cells eventually died. Henrietta’s cells were different; they reproduced an entire generation every 24 hours, and they never stopped. Her cells were part of research into the genes that cause cancer and those that suppress it; they have helped develop drugs for treating herpes, leukemia, influenza, hemophilia and Parkinson’s disease; and been used to study lactose digestion, sexually transmitted diseases, appendicitis, human longevity, mosquito mating and the negative cellular effects of working in sewers.
I am also intrigued by the persistent use of initials in medical reporting, the result of the need to maintain a patient’s privacy.
One set of interest is HM, which stands for Henry Molaison. He is known by thousands of psychology students. HM had been knocked down by a bicycle accident at the age of 7 and began to have minor seizures at 9 and major seizures at 16. By the time he was 27, he became incapacitated by his seizures, despite high doses of anticonvulsant medication. In 1953, he underwent a bilateral medial temporal-lobe resection, an experimental brain operation intended to alleviate the severe epilepsy he had faced since childhood.
The procedure used for Henry had been previously carried in psychotic patients, and the surgery was performed with the approval of the patient and his family. The operation did control his seizures, but with an unanticipated and devastating consequence consequence—an extreme amnesia that robbed Henry of the ability to form new memories and, in doing so, determined the course of the rest of his life.
For almost six decades, the scientists who studied Henry kept his name hidden away. When they wrote about him they were always careful not to reveal too much, for fear that outsiders might find him, and they were successful. There wasn’t a single paper, out of the hundreds that chronicled in great detail the experiments performed on Henry during the 55 years between his operation and his death, that contained anything but the vaguest biographical information about Henry himself. Work with HM has established fundamental principles about how the memory functions are organized in the brain.
As mentioned above, HM is likely the most studied individual in the history of neuroscience. Interest in his case can be attributed to a number of factors, including the unusual purity and severity of the memory impairment, its stability and its well-described anatomical basis. Because HM was the first well studied patient with amnesia, he became the yardstick against which other patients with memory impairment would be compared. The study of HM established the key principles about how memory is organized that continue to guide the discipline.
There are two very interesting books that describe Henry’s unique life. One written by Suzanne Corkin is entitled Permanent Present Tense, the other authored by Luke Dittrich is simply, Patient H.M.
Final Thoughts
Progress in medicine is indebted to countless individuals, but much of the credit must be shared with both Henry Molaison and Henrietta Lacks. They achieved fame under extremely different circumstances. Henrietta was not aware of her contribution as she had long passed away, whereas Henry had lost the ability to recall his.
Max Sherman is a medical writer and pharmacist retired from the medical device industry. He has taught college courses on regulatory and compliance issues at Ivy Tech, Grace College and Butler University. Sherman has an unquenchable thirst for knowledge on all levels. Eclectic Science, the title of his column, touches on famed doctors and scientists, human senses, aging, various diseases, and little-known facts about many species, including their contributions to scientific research. He can be reached by email at [email protected].
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