ABC

150px Front page, 2009-06-02
Type	Daily newspaper
Format	Compact
Owner	Grupo Vocento
Publisher	Catalina Luca de Tena
Editor	Ángel Expósito
Founded	January 1, 1903
Political alignment	Conservativism, Monarchism, Centre-Right
Language	Spanish
Headquarters	Juan Ignacio de Tena 7, Madrid 28027  ESP
Circulation	243,154 daily in 2011[1]
Official website	www.abc.es

ABC is a Spanish national daily newspaper founded in Madrid on January 1, 1903, by Torcuato Luca de Tena y Alvarez-Ossorio. ABC started as a weekly newspaper, turning daily in June 1905. Today, ABC is the third largest general-interest newspaper in Spain, and the oldest newspaper still operating in Madrid. ABC is often referred to as a newspaper of record from Spain, along with El País and El Mundo.

ABC is known for generally supporting conservative political views and defending the Spanish monarchy.

History[link]

During the Spanish Civil War, ABC famously published two different versions. On July 20, 1936, shortly after the war began, ABC in Madrid was seized by the Popular Front (Frente Popular), which changed the paper's politics to support the Republicans. A separate ABC printed in Seville supported the Nationalists. When the war was over, ABC in Madrid was given back to its legitimate owners and once again became the largest newspaper in Spain.

It later moved from its historic landmark offices in Madrid by Paseo de la Castellana, which are now a shopping mall.

On September 25, 2009, ABC made its complete archives, dating back to 1903, available online, giving modern readers a chance to see contemporaneous news about the Spanish Civil War or Francisco Franco's death.

Today[link]

Today, ABC publishes in compact-sized stapled sheets, noticeably smaller than the loose tabloid format favoured by most Spanish dailies, including El País and El Mundo. Its cover distinctively features a full-size picture.

After joining the joint-venture that resulted in Grupo Vocento, ABC has taken a more moderate stance than other conservative media outlets, notably by refusing to second conspiracy theories related to the 2004 Madrid train bombings (locally known as 11-M).

Its former long-time director (since 1983) Luis María Ansón left in 1998 to found another daily, La Razón, which initially catered to more conservative readers.

References[link]

External links[link]

• ABC.es – official online version of ABC
• The ABC – Article in English discussing ABC

v t e Daily newspapers published in Spain with circulation over 90,000* News ABC   •   El Correo   •   El Mundo   •   El País   •   El Periódico de Catalunya   •   La Razón   •   La Vanguardia   •   La Voz de Galicia Sports Diario AS   •   Marca   •   El Mundo Deportivo   •   Sport List of all newspapers in Spain with over 5,000 daily paid circulation     (* according to Spanish Oficina de Justificación de la Difusión, 2011)

Look up ABC, ABCs, or abc in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

ABC are the first three letters of the Latin alphabet. They may refer to:

Broadcasting media[link]

• American Broadcasting Company, a private US broadcaster
• Australian Broadcasting Corporation, national publicly funded broadcaster of Australia
• ABC Radio, the former name of Cumulus Media Networks, an American radio network (formerly owned by the American Broadcasting Company)
• ABC (Swedish news programme), a regional news programme
• Asahi Broadcasting Corporation, a Japanese commercial television and radio station
• Associated Broadcasting Company, a Philippine television network
• Associated British Corporation, a former British film and television company
• ABC (newspaper), Spanish daily newspaper

Cars[link]

• ABC (1906 automobile), an American car
• ABC (1920 automobile), an English car
• ABC (1922 automobile), a planned American car
• Active Body Control, a type of automobile suspension technology
• ABC Motors, an English manufacturer of aircraft, aero engines and cars

Companies[link]

• ABC Stores (Hawaii), a chain of convenience stores
• ABC Group, a department store
• ABC Learning Centres, an Australian child care business
• Agricultural Bank of China, a bank in the People's Republic of China
• Aerated Bread Company, a former and once famous British bakery and tea-room chain
• Appalachian Brewing Company, an American brewery
• Arab Banking Corporation
• ABC Cinemas, a UK cinema chain
• Anglo Belgian Corporation, diesel engine manufacturer
• Audit Bureau of Circulations, publication circulation auditing companies
  • Audit Bureau of Circulations (India)
  • Audit Bureau of Circulations (UK)
  • Audit Bureau of Circulations (North America)

Computer science[link]

• ABC (computer virus), virus
• ABC (programming language), an imperative general-purpose programming language and programming environment developed at CWI, Netherlands by Leo Geurts, Lambert Meertens, and Steven Pemberton
• Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm, a search algorithm used for optimizing multi-variable and multi-modal numerical functions
• ABC (stream cipher), a stream cipher algorithm
• ABC (Yet Another BitTorrent Client), a free software, open source BitTorrent client based on BitTornado
• ABC, a line of computer models designed by Dataindustrier AB of Sweden
• ABC notation, a language for notating music using the ASCII character set
• Abstract base class, a programming language concept
• Acorn Business Computer, a series of microcomputers announced at the end of 1983 by the British company Acorn Computers
• Alcatel Business Communications, a telecommunications protocol
• Atanasoff–Berry Computer, an early electronic digital computer

Economics[link]

• ABC analysis, an inventory categorization technique
• Activity-based costing, an accounting method

Mathematics[link]

• abc conjecture, a concept in number theory
• ABC formula
• Approximate Bayesian computation, a family of statistical techniques

Medicine and biology[link]

• Abacavir, an antiretroviral drug used to treat HIV/Aids
• ABC (medicine), a mnemonic for "Airway, Breathing, Circulation"
• ABC model of flower development, a genetic model
• Abortion – breast cancer hypothesis, a posited connection between breast cancer and abortion
• Aneurysmal bone cyst, a kind of lesion
• ATP-binding cassette transporter, a transmembrane protein
• ABC strategy for "Abstinence, be faithful, use a condom", a sex education strategy

Motorcycles[link]

• ABC motorcycles

Music[link]

Songs and albums[link]

• ABC (album), a 1970 album by The Jackson 5
  • "ABC" (song), a 1970 song by The Jackson 5
• ABC (Jin album), a 2007 album by Chinese-American rapper Jin. ABC is Jin's fourth overall album, which was released on February 20, 2007
  • "ABC" (Jin song), Jin's first single off his 4th album "ABC" (American-born Chinese)
• "ABC" (Pipettes song)
• Alphabet song, or "the ABC's", a song used to teach children the alphabet
• ABCs (song), the first official single by rapper K'naan on his album Troubadour

Groups[link]

• ABC (band), a UK New Wave band
• Another Bad Creation, an American R&B and rap musical group
• Acid Black Cherry, a Japanese Rock band
• Alien Beat Club, a Danish pop band

Record labels[link]

• ABC Classics, an Australian record label
• ABC Records, an American record label

Other music[link]

• O2 ABC Glasgow, a music venue
• ABC notation, a musical notation language

Organizations and projects[link]

Ornithological[link]

• African Bird Club, a British ornithological charity
• Australian Bird Count, a project of the Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union

Political[link]

• All Basotho Convention, a political party in Lesotho
• Americans Battling Communism, an anti-communist organization in the United States
• Anarchist Black Cross, an anarchist political support organization
• Anything But Conservative, or ABC campaign, 2008 Canadian federal election political campaign
• Association of British Counties, an advocacy group
• Anti-Bases Campaign, an organisation campaigning to remove foreign military bases and intelligence installations from New Zealand, and to dismantle the Government Communications Security Bureau

Religious[link]

• Association of Baptist Churches in Ireland, a Republic of Ireland and a United Kingdom based Christian denomination

Sports[link]

• Amateur Boxing Club (alternate name of Amateur Boxing Association of England), the governing body of amateur boxing clubs in England
• Indianapolis ABCs, a Negro league baseball team that played in the early to mid 1900s

Other organizations and projects[link]

• African Black Coalition, a University of California student organization
• Aircraft Builders Council, a provider of aviation products liability insurance
• American Bowling Congress, now part of the United States Bowling Congress

Places[link]

• ABC nations, a political term referring to Argentina, Brazil and Chile
• ABC Islands (Alaska), a term referring to Admiralty Island, Baranof Island, and Chichagof Island
• ABC islands (Lesser Antilles), a term referring to Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao
• ABC Region, an industrial area outside of São Paulo, Brazil
• Academia Británica Cuscatleca (ABC), a school in Santa Tecla, El Salvador
• Altnabreac railway station (National Rail code), in Scotland
• American Bank Center, an arena located in Corpus Christi, Texas

Publications and media organizations[link]

• ABC (Audit Bureau of Circulations UK), a circulation-auditing organization in the UK and Ireland
• ABC (newspaper), a Spanish newspaper founded in 1903
• Alphabet book, or ABC book, any of several children's books depicting the alphabet
• America's Best Comics, an imprint of DC Comics
• Audit Bureau of Circulations (North America), a circulation-auditing organization in North America
• Audit Bureau of Circulations (India), a circulation-auditing organization in the India

Technology[link]

• ABC Dry Chemical, a fire extinguishing agent
• ABC weapon or Weapon of mass destruction
• Aerial bundled cable, for power lines
• Automatic Buffer Couplers, railway couplers
• Alice, Bob and Charlie (and variants), a nomenclature convention used in cryptography

Other uses[link]

• ABC Futebol Clube, a football (soccer) club based in Natal, Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil
• Advanced Booking Charter, a kind of air travel
• Air batu campur, also known as ais kacang, a Malaysian dessert
• Alcoholic beverage control state, the American system of state regulation of alcoholic beverage sales
• Alien big cat or phantom cat, a large feline that has been purported to appear in regions outside its indigenous range
• Alphabet, a standardized set of letters
• American-born Chinese, people of Chinese ethnicity born in the USA
• Andrew Cunningham, 1st Viscount Cunningham of Hyndhope (1883–1963), nicknamed ABC, a British World War II admiral
• Archbishop of Canterbury
• Asian brown cloud A layer of air pollution
• "ABC-DEF-GHI", a song from the television show Sesame Street
• "Always Be Closing", a sales and marketing aphorism that stresses the importance of completing as many possible sales as often as possible. Notably expounded on by the character Blake in the David Mamet-written movie Glengarry Glen Ross

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

Peter Combe is an Australian Children's Entertainer and Musician. He has inspired many popular Australian children's artists, such as the Hooley Dooleys and The Wiggles.

He has had 22 releases, including 7 Gold Albums, 2 Platinum, 3 ARIA awards and 1 ARIA final nomination.

Some of his best known songs include "Toffee Apple", "Spaghetti Bolognaise", "Mr Clickety Cane", "Juicy Juicy Green Grass" and "Newspaper Mama".

In 2006, he crossed over to the genre of political commentary with his song Free David Hicks.

Recent Revival[link]

Recently Peter Combe has started playing overage pub gigs around Australia aimed at young adults who grew up listening to his music.^[1] A clip of the live performance his song Mr. Clickety Cane at the Corner Hotel in Melbourne is available on Combe's Myspace Page showing a crowd of young adults singing along to lyrics such as "Wash your face in orange Juice", and "Belly flop on a pizza? Ewww!". The live DVD/CD Live at Jive was recorded in 2008 at one of these shows.

Discography[link]

• Vagabond (1982)
• Songs for Little Kids (1982)
• Spaghetti Bolognaise (1985)
• Toffee Apple (1987)
• Newspaper Mama (1988)
• Chopsticks (1989)
• Peter Combe's Christmas Album (1990) (Music from this album is also featured on the 1992-released video 'Peter Combe's Christmas Under the Stars', which features a live performance in Adelaide in Christmas 1991)
• The Absolutely Very Best of Peter Combe (1990) (This album was re-released as 'Live and Rocking' in 2000)
• Snugglepot and Cuddlepie (1993)
• Spook (1993)
• Greatest Hits (1994)
• Little Groover (1996)
• Best Friends (1999)
• Songs From a Telephone Box (2002)
• Ticke Pot - Up and About (2002)
• Wash Your Face in Orange Juice (2003)
• Classic Fairy Tales (2003)
• Re-invented (2004)
• Peter Combe's Triple Pack
• Classic Fairy Tales - Volume 2 (2004)
• Live at Jive (With the Juicy Juicy Green Band) (2008)
• Kiddywinks (2009)

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official Website
• Myspace Page

Senator The Honourable Stephen Conroy
Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy
Incumbent
Assumed office 3 December 2007
Preceded by	Helen Coonan
Personal details
Born	(1963-01-18) 18 January 1963 (age 49) Ely, Cambridgeshire, UK
Nationality	Australian
Political party	Australian Labor Party
Religion	Catholic
Website	www.minister.dbcde.gov.au

Stephen Michael Conroy (born 18 January 1963 in Ely, Cambridgeshire, England) is an Australian politician and the current Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy in the Gillard Ministry. He has been an Australian Labor Party member of the Australian Senate since May 1996, representing the state of Victoria.^[1]

Early life[link]

Conroy's parents worked at an air-force base, where his mother Jean monitored radar and his father Bill was a sergeant. In December 1973 the Conroys moved to Canberra, where he attended Daramalan College. He obtained a Bachelor of Economics at the Australian National University in Canberra. His involvement in student politics was minimal, although he helped organise a rally against student fees.^[2][3]

Politics[link]

After university, Conroy worked as an advisor to Ros Kelly and Barry Jones. He moved to Melbourne to pursue a political career where he met Robert Ray, and served for a time as Superannuation Officer with the Transport Workers Union and as a City of Footscray councillor.

He was appointed to the Senate in 1996 when Gareth Evans resigned to contest a seat in the Lower House. In October 1998, Conroy joined the Opposition Shadow Ministry and became Deputy Opposition Leader in the Senate. He was Shadow Minister for Trade, Corporate Governance and Financial Services from 2003 to 2004, and became Shadow Minister for Communications and Information Technology in October 2004.^[2][3]

Conroy is a leading member of the Labor Right and was criticised in early 2006 by members of the Socialist Left and Simon Crean for working for the replacement of several long-serving MPs with new members, including Bill Shorten, Richard Marles, Mark Dreyfus, Nathan Murphy and Matt Carrick.^{[citation needed]}

After Simon Crean's win in the Hotham pre-selection, where Conroy supported Martin Pakula for the position, Crean attacked Conroy repeatedly, calling on him to resign his position as Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate.^[4]

In April 2009, Conroy faced criticism after he made comments disparaging the ISP iiNet's defence in a Supreme Court case against a number of film studios and Channel Seven. Opposition spokesmen described the comments as prejudicial.^[5] After iiNet won, Conroy said it was disappointing the two sides had ended up in court.^[6]

In February 2010, he admitted using his influence to have a former Labor politician Mike Kaiser, take the position of Government Relations and External Affairs Executive with the National Broadband Network^[7] Kaiser was previously forced to retire from the Labor party due to electoral fraud.

Also in February 2010, he was reported to spent some time while on holiday with Kerry Stokes weeks before cutting license fees that are charged to free-to-air networks, including Stokes' broadcasting network, Channel Seven.^[8]

In June 2010, Conroy was criticized by SAGE-AU for "misinformation that verged on fear-mongering" when he suggested Google street view cars could have captured internet banking details in their recording of wireless network traffic, as these are generally exchanged over secure HTTPS connections.^[9][10]

Portfolio[link]

Conroy is Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy in the First Rudd Ministry. In that role, he is responsible for internet censorship,^[11] the proposed National Broadband Network^{[citation needed]}, and the proposed switch to digital television as a complete replacement for analogue.^[3][12] In May 2010 he was appointed as a founding member to a new United Nations commission, the Broadband Commission for Digital Development.^[13]

Internet censorship[link]

Conroy has faced severe criticism over his Internet censorship policies from various groups. While initially promoted as a way to block child pornography, the censorship policy has been extended to include legal material traditionally refused classification by the Office of Film and Literature Classification, including sites depicting drug use, crime, sex, cruelty, violence or "revolting and abhorrent phenomena" that "offend against the standards of morality".^[14] On 19 March 2009 it was reported that ACMA's blacklist of banned sites had been leaked online, and had been published by Wikileaks. About half of the list was child-porn related; the remainder included sites dealing with legal porn, online gambling, euthanasia, Christianity and fringe religions; sites belonging to a tour operator, dentist and animal carers were also listed.^[15] Conroy described the leak and publication of the blacklist as "grossly irresponsible" and that it undermined efforts to improve "cyber safety".^[16]

In June 2009 he was named "Internet villain of the year" at the 11th annual Internet industry awards in the UK, for "individuals or organisations that have upset the Internet industry and hampered its development – those whom the industry loves to hate."^[17]

In December 2009 "Internet pranksters" registered the domain name stephenconroy.com.au^[18] which was swiftly removed by auDA^[19] raising concerns^[20] about auDA's political neutrality and the further potential for suppression of political speech after the proposed mandatory Internet filter is legislated.

In May 2010, Conroy was accused of deliberately misrepresenting iiNet's position with regards to the new internet filter.^[21] His department could also not say where he obtained other figures from, such as how he believes that 85% of ISPs support the new filter.^[22]

Personal life[link]

Senator Conroy is a Catholic, and is said to be socially conservative. While he voted against the abortion drug RU486 in a conscience vote,^[23] he has claimed not to have taken a conservative position on all issues:

"I think the point I made was that while I would prefer there to be a parliamentary framework for the RU486, I think it was, debate, if the actual issue was before Parliament I would probably vote for the distribution of the pill. People often say, oh no Steve's a conservative Catholic, but they won't ever find on my voting record something that backs that up. I voted against the Northern Territory's euthanasia legislation. I voted for some of the cloning debate. So I voted in, I like to consider the issues on their merits and I voted what some would characterise as conservatively and some would characterise as progressively on a number of issues."^[24][25]

Conroy and his wife, Paula Benson, have a daughter born in November 2006 with the assistance of an egg donor and a surrogate mother, both friends of the Conroys. The procedures were performed in New South Wales instead of their home state Victoria, where altruistic surrogacy is banned.^[23][26][27]

He was a national volleyball representative as a teenager and has been the President of Volleyball Victoria since 2004.^[3][28]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Stephen Conroy's website as minister for DBCDE
• Stephen Conroy's parliamentary webpage as senator for Victoria

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Henrietta Lacks (August 1, 1920 – October 4, 1951)^[1] (sometimes erroneously called Henrietta Lakes, Helen Lane or Helen Larson) was an African-American woman who was the unwitting source of cells (from her cancerous tumor), which were cultured by George Otto Gey to create an immortal cell line for medical research. This is now known as the HeLa cell line.^[2]

Biography[link]

Early life (1920–1940)[link]

Henrietta Lacks was born Loretta Pleasant on August 1, 1920^[1][3] in Roanoke, Virginia, to Eliza (1886–1924)^[4] and John Randall Pleasant I (1881–1969).^[5][6][7] Her family is uncertain how her name changed from Loretta to Henrietta.^[1] Eliza, her mother, died giving birth to her tenth child in 1924. Henrietta's father felt unable to handle the children, so he took them all to Clover, Virginia and distributed the children between relatives. Henrietta, nicknamed Hennie, ended up with her grandfather, Tommy Lacks.^[1]

Later life (1941–1950)[link]

Pleasant married her first cousin, David "Day" Lacks (1915–2002), in Halifax County, Virginia. David had already been living with Henrietta's grandfather when she moved there at age 4. Their marriage on April 10, 1941, after their first two children were born (the first when Henrietta was just 14), surprised many in the family as they had been raised like brother and sister.^[1]

At the end of 1941, their cousin Fred Garret convinced the Lacks couple to leave the tobacco farm and have Day work at Bethlehem Steel's Sparrow's Point steel mill. Soon, they moved—Day first, then Henrietta and their two oldest children, Lawrence and Lucile Elsie Pleasant (Elsie)—to Maryland. David bought a house for the family with the money Garret gave Day when he left to go overseas. Their house was on New Pittsburgh Avenue in Turners Station, now a part of Dundalk, Baltimore County, Maryland. This community was one of the largest^[8][9] and one of the youngest^[9] of the approximately forty African American communities in Baltimore County.

Day and Henrietta had five children together: Lawrence (b. 1935), Elsie (1939–1955), David "Sonny" Jr. (b. 1947), Deborah (1949–2009), and Joseph (b. 1950, later changed name to Zakariyya Bari Abdul Rahman). Joseph Lacks, Henrietta's last child, was born at Johns Hopkins Hospital in November 1950, just four and a half months before Henrietta was diagnosed with cancer.^[1] Elsie was described by the family as "different", "deaf and dumb" and in 1955 died in the Hospital for the Negro Insane (which was later renamed Crownsville Hospital Center and was also known as Crownsville State Hospital). Elsie had been placed there about 1950, around the same time Henrietta discovered that she had lumps and unusual bleeding.^[1]

Diagnosis and death (1951)[link]

On January 29, 1951, Henrietta went to Johns Hopkins Hospital because she felt a knot inside her. It all started when she asked her cousins to feel her belly, asking if they felt the lump that she did. Her cousins assumed correctly that she was pregnant. But, after giving birth to her fifth child, Joseph, Henrietta started bleeding abnormally and profusely. Her local doctor tested her for syphilis, which came back negative, and referred her to Johns Hopkins.

Johns Hopkins was their only choice for a hospital, since it was the only one in proximity to them that treated black patients. Howard Jones, her new doctor, examined Henrietta and the lump in her cervix. It was nothing he had ever seen before. He cut off a small part of the tumor and sent it to the pathology lab. Soon after, Jones discovered she had a malignant epidermoid carcinoma of the cervix Stage 1 (cervical cancer).

Lacks was treated with radium tube inserts, which were sewn in place. After several days in place, the tubes were removed and she was released from Johns Hopkins with instructions to return for X-ray treatments as a follow-up. During her radiation treatments for the tumor, two samples of Henrietta's cervix were removed— a healthy part and a cancerous part— without her permission.^[10] The cells from her cervix were given to Dr. George Otto Gey. These cells would eventually become the HeLa immortal cell line, a commonly used cell line in biomedical research.^[1]

Lacks returned for the X-ray treatments. However, her condition worsened and the Hopkins doctors treated her with antibiotics, thinking that her problem might be complicated by an underlying venereal disease (she had neurosyphilis and presented with acute gonorrhea at one point as well).^{[citation needed]}

In significant pain and without improvement, Lacks returned to Hopkins on August 8th for a treatment session but asked to be admitted. She remained at the hospital until her death.^[1] Though she received treatment and blood transfusions, she died of uremic poisoning on October 4, 1951, at 12:30 A.M. at the age of thirty-one.^[11] A subsequent partial autopsy showed that the cancer had metastasized throughout her body.^[1]

Henrietta Lacks was buried without a tombstone in a family cemetery in Lackstown, a part of Clover in Halifax County, Virginia. Her exact burial location is not known, although the family believes it is within feet of her mother's gravesite.^[1] Lackstown is the name of the land that has been held by the (black) Lacks family since they received it from the (white) Lacks family, who had owned the ancestors of the black Lackses when slavery was legal. Many members of the black Lacks family were also descended from the white Lacks family. A row of boxwoods separates the graves of whites from those of the blacks buried in the family cemetery.^[1] For decades, Henrietta Lacks' mother has had the only tombstone of the five graves in the family cemetery in Lackstown.^[11][12]

Legacy[link]

In scientific research[link]

The cells from Henrietta's tumor were given to researcher George Gey, who "discovered that [Henrietta's] cells did something they'd never seen before: They could be kept alive and grow."^[13] Before this, cells cultured from other cells would only survive for a few days. Scientists spent more time trying to keep the cells alive than performing actual research on the cells but some cells from Lacks's tumor sample behaved differently than others. George Gey was able to isolate one specific cell, multiply it, and start a cell line. Gey named the sample HeLa, after the initial letters of Henrietta Lacks' name. As the first human cells grown in a lab that were "immortal" (they do not die after a few cell divisions), they could be used for conducting many experiments. This represented an enormous boon to medical and biological research.^[1]

As reporter Michael Rogers stated, the growth of HeLa by a researcher at the hospital helped answer the demands of the 10,000 who marched for a cure to polio shortly before Lacks' death. By 1954, the HeLa strain of cells was being used by Jonas Salk to develop a vaccine for polio.^[1][11] To test Salk's new vaccine, the cells were quickly put into mass production in the first-ever cell production factory.^[14]

Demand for the HeLa cells quickly grew. Since they were put into mass production, Henrietta's cells have been mailed to scientists around the globe for "research into cancer, AIDS, the effects of radiation and toxic substances, gene mapping, and countless other scientific pursuits".^[11] HeLa cells have been used to test human sensitivity to tape, glue, cosmetics, and many other products.^[1] Scientists have grown some 20 tons of her cells.^[1][15] and there are almost 11,000 patents involving HeLa cells.^[1]

In the early 1970s, the family started getting calls from researchers who wanted blood samples from them to learn the family's genetics (eye colours, hair colours, and genetic connections). The family wondered why and this is when they learned about the removal of Henrietta's cells.^[1]

Recognition[link]

In 1996, Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, the state of Georgia and the mayor of Atlanta recognized the late Henrietta Lacks' family for her posthumous contributions to medicine and health research.^[16]

Her life was commemorated annually by Turners Station residents for a few years after Morehouse's commemoration. A congressional resolution in her honor was presented by Robert Ehrlich following soon after the first commemoration of her, her family, and her contributions to science in Turners Station.

Events in the Turners Station's community have also commemorated the contributions of others including Mary Kubicek, the laboratory assistant who discovered that HeLa cells lived outside the body, as well as Dr. Gey and his nurse wife, Margaret Gey, who together after over 20 years of attempts were eventually able to grow human cells outside of the body.^[1]

In 2011, Morgan State University granted her a posthumous honorary degree.^[17]

On September 14, 2011, the Board of Directors of Washington ESD 114 Evergreen School District chose to name a new health and bioscience high school in her honor. The new school, scheduled to open in the fall of 2013, will be named Henrietta Lacks Health and Bioscience High School.^[18] "It is such an honor to name our new school after a person who so impacted the world of medicine and science," said school board member Victoria Bradford, who also served on the naming committee. "It is also a privilege to be the first organization to publicly memorialize Henrietta Lacks by naming this school building after her."^[19]

In media[link]

In 1998, Modern Times: The Way of All Flesh, a one-hour BBC documentary on Lacks and HeLa directed by Adam Curtis, won the Best Science and Nature Documentary at the San Francisco International Film Festival. Immediately following the film's airing in 1997, an article on HeLa cells, Lacks, and her family was published by reporter Jacques Kelly in The Baltimore Sun. In the 1990s, the Dundalk Eagle published the first article on her in a newspaper in Baltimore City and Baltimore County, and it continues to announce upcoming local commemorative activities. The Lacks family was also honored at the Smithsonian Institution.^[20] In 2001, it was announced that the National Foundation for Cancer Research would be honoring "the late Henrietta Lacks for the contributions made to cancer research and modern medicine" on September 14. Because of the events of September 11, 2001, the event was canceled.^[21]

In 2000^[22] Mal Webb released a CD with a song about Lacks called Helen Lane.^[23]

In her 2010 book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot documents the histories of both the HeLa cell line and the Lacks family. Henrietta's husband, David Lacks, was told little following her death. Suspicions fueled by racial issues prevalent in the South were compounded by issues of class and education. For their part, members of the Lacks family were kept in the dark about the existence of the tissue line. When its existence was revealed in two articles written in March 1976 by Michael Rogers, one in the Detroit Free Press^[24] and one in Rolling Stone,^[1][25] family members were confused about how Henrietta's cells could have been taken without consent and how they could still be alive 25 years after her death.^[20]

In May 2010, The Virginian-Pilot published two articles on Lacks, HeLa, and her family,^[1][26] which mentions that the Morehouse School of Medicine has donated the money for Henrietta's grave as well as her daughter Elsie, who died in 1955, to finally have headstones. Her grandchildren wrote her epitaph: "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"^[1][26]

In May 2010, HBO announced that Oprah Winfrey and Alan Ball would develop a film project based on Skloot's book.^[26]

On May 17, 2010, NBC ran a fictionalized version of Lacks' story on Law & Order, titled "Immortal". An article in Slate called the episode "shockingly close to the true story."^[27]

On May 31, 2011 Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine released the CD Enhanced Methods of Questioning with a song about Henrietta Lacks and the HeLa immortal cell line called "The Cells That Will Not Die".

Notes[link]

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Russell Brown and James H M Henderson, 1983, "The Mass Production and Distribution of HeLa Cells at Tuskegee Institute", 1953–1955. J Hist Med allied Sci 38(4):415–43
• Michael Gold, A Conspiracy of Cells, 1986, State University of New York Press
• Hannah Landecker 2000 "Immortality, In Vitro. A History of the HeLa Cell Line". In Brodwin, Paul E., ed.: Biotechnology and Culture. Bodies, Anxieties, Ethics. Bloomington/Indianapolis, 53–72, ISBN 0-253-21428-9
• Hannah Landecker, 1999, "Between Beneficence and Chattel: The Human Biological in Law and Science," Science in Context, 203–225.
• Hannah Landecker, 2007, Culturing Life: How Cells Became Technologies. "HeLa" is the title of the fourth chapter.

External links[link]

• The Henrietta Lacks Foundation, a foundation established to, among other things, help provide scholarship funds and health insurance to Henrietta Lacks's family.
• February 2010 CBS Sunday Morning Segment, "The Immortal Henrietta Lacks," featuring the Lacks Family
• Slate: "Immortal: Ripped From Which Headline," story about Law and Order episode based on Henrietta Lacks
• RadioLab segment, "Henrietta's Tumor," featuring Deborah Lacks.
• January 2010 Smithsonian magazine article
• Jones Institute for Reproductive Medicine
• Photographs from "Henrietta Lacks' 'Immortal' Cells" by Smithsonian.com
• Surprising Science: “Fair” Use of our Cells by Sarah Zielinski, February 2, 2010, SmithsonianMag.com blog
• Wired Magazine 2010 article with timeline of HeLa
• The Way Of All Flesh — Documentary by Adam Curtis
• Audio Interview with Rebecca Skloot about her book "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks"
• Tavis Smiley interview with Rebecca Skloot about The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
• The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks book website with additional features (photo/video/audio)
• New York Times review of Rebecca Skloot's book on Henrietta
• Life of Henrietta Lacks
• Family Talks about Dead Mother Whose Cells fight Cancer (Jet Magazine – April 1, 1976)
• 25 Years after Death, Black Mother's Cells Live for Cancer Study (Jet Magazine – April 1, 1976)
• Helen Lane, a song by Mal Webb