Here's to HeLa!

Day 3: The Purchase That is Always Forbidden

I'm in the middle of a really good book...aside from The Book of Jewish Values. It's captivating, easy to read, and (surprisingly for me) nonfiction. It's a book called The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot.

Since these two books don't have much in common, I didn't expect to be drawing connections like the one I discovered this morning while sitting in a Boeing aircraft somewhere between Indianapolis and Washington D.C.

Henrietta Lacks was an African-American woman who died of a rare and aggressive form of cervical cancer in the early 1950's. Her doctor took some cells without asking or telling her or her family. These cells were discovered to be the only cells that doctors had successfully kept alive outside of a human body. HeLa cells (named after Henrietta Lacks) have been behind all types of lifesaving vaccines, medications, and treatments, and this woman was never given credit for the wonderful and amazing things her cells were doing.

Last night, as I sat down to read my "mission" for day 3, I never expected to find that the Rabbi's discussion of piracy and the Jewish view as to why piracy is wrong relevant to a book that has already really impacted me and the way I think about science and medicine.

Rabbi Telushkin brings proofs from Bava Kamma and Proverbs to enforce the wrongdoing in piracy. He concludes by telling his audience that "if someone is trying to sell you something that is not his to sell--whether goods or information--you have no right to buy" (7).

As much as I wish I could thank Henrietta Lacks for what she and her cells (and her family) have done for my generation and every generation to come, while reading this book, I can't help but apologize on behalf of the doctors who "pirated" Mrs. Lacks' cells and sold them to labs all over the world. Maybe they could've used a good D'var Torah on Jewish values...