Médecine sciences : M/S
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Fifty years after Henrietta Lacks died of aggressive glandular cervical cancer, the first cell line - HeLa cell line - is the workhorse of laboratories everywhere. It helped to produce drugs for numerous diseases, including poliomyelitis, Parkinson's, leukemias. ⋯ For decades, biologists worked with contaminated cell lines and today, the problem is not yet solved. But the story of HeLa cells is also a moving reflection of racial and ethical issues in medicine in the late half-twentieth century in the USA.