Credit: HelaCells.blogspot.com

After 62 years, researchers finally asked Henrietta Lacks's family for consent to use her cancer cells for study. Is this a brand new angle for HIV cure research or another method for new discoveries on medical treatment?

Lacks Family on Researchers

National Institutes of Health has been working out an agreement with the family so that privacy can be maintained while researchers study Henrietta Lacks's cells. When Lacks died, researchers at the Johns Hopkins removed the cells from her body without her family's knowledge or consent.

Her family did not know how extensively her cells were studied until 1973 and one of her grandchildren, Jeri Lacks Whye commented about it.

"The biggest concern was privacy - what information was actually going to be out there about our grandmother and what information they can obtain from her sequencing that will tell them about her children and grandchildren and going down the line," Whye told The New York Times, quoted by The Atlantic Wire.

The researchers and Lacks's family made an agreement regarding the separate studies set to be published however, some have warned them about issues surrounding genome research and family privacy.

"They get so much pride out of what HeLa cells have done for society and the world. They want HeLa cells to continue to do good. They just want to be part of the conversation," author Rebecca Skloot said to CNN.

HeLa Cells

HeLa cells are member of the immortal cell line which can undergo cell division as long as the organism is alive. HeLa cells can also be prolonged growing in laboratories such as using test tubes.

HeLa cells contribution to medical science and society:

- Tested as the first polio vaccine in 1950s by Jonas Salk

- Used in cancer research and AIDS

- Used for studies in radiation and toxic substance effects

- Studies in sex steroid hormones