Henrietta Lacks circa 1945

HeLa cells were obviously a tremendous gift to science, but an investigation into their history brings to light a more compelling tale. HeLa cells were named after the woman they wee taken from: Henrietta Lacks. Henrietta was a poor, African American woman who happened to be treated for cervical cancer at Johns Hopkins University, one of the premier medical research hospitals in the world. Before she passed away, a sample of her cervical cells were taken without her consent, as was the standard practice at the time. Fast forward almost thirty years, her family were largely unaware of the HeLa cell line. This line had been multiplied and sold for millions over that time, yet the destitute family never profited. No scientist had really ever explained to the under-educated family what a cell even looks like.

Enter author and science writer Rebecca Skloot. She just published her 1st book, the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, now a New York times Bestseller. She spent 10 years researching, breaking barriers, and fighting to tell Henrietta's tale. I just read the book as part of the Down to a Science book club, I thought it was an eye opening discussion of science, ethics, race, and class. In fact, I found Rebecca's years of frustration trying to break through to the family the most compelling parts of the book. The overt distrust of science, particularly of medicine, seems an appropriate tale in these tough times for science communication.

She will be in the Bay Area the last week of April to discuss the book. Below are her local appearances:
Dr. Kiki's Science Hour
When: Thursday, April 22nd, 3-4 PM
Details: Local science personality Kirsten Sanford will interview Rebecca on her weekly science program.

Book Passage Cafe
When: Sunday, April 25th, 2-4 PM
Where: Corte Madera
Details: Rebecca will give a short talk with a book signing to follow.

Ask a Scientist
When: Monday, April 26th, 7-9 PM
Where: Horatius Cafe
Cost: $3 donation
Details: Rebecca will give a longer talk on the development of the book with a book signing to follow.

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You're as likely to be struck by lightning
as to have a severe reaction to a vaccine.

I was reading an article in Time last week about parents not vaccinating their children. The story was about how this phenomenon is becoming more widespread.

These kinds of stories are weird to me because vaccines are pretty safe. The risk of an adverse side effect is incredibly small. For example, the risk for anaphylaxis from the Hepatitis B Virus vaccination is around 1 in 600,000. This is about the same risk as being struck by lightning (1 in 700,000).

Of course, the article wasn't talking about known risks. Instead, it was referring to a hypothesized link between vaccines and autism.

People proposed this link when they noticed that cases of autism and the number of vaccinations were rising at the same time. Of course, just because two things happen to occur at the same time, this does not mean they are causally linked. For example, the increase in global temperature is not related to the decrease in the world's populations of pirates (despite what the Pastafarians say).

So how could an increased number of vaccinations cause an increase in the number of cases of autism? I have seen two ideas put forth. The first is that thimerosal is to blame. The second is that there are so many vaccinations now that we are stressing out the body's immune system. Most likely neither idea is valid.

Thimerosal is a mercury-based preservative that used to be used in vaccines. Even though there haven't been any good studies on the effects of thimerosal on brain development, everyone knows mercury is bad for the brain. So the idea behind thimerosal makes some sense.

Back in 2001, vaccine manufacturers decided to eliminate thimerosal from their vaccines. We would predict, then, that cases of autism should go down significantly if thimerosal was linked to autism. They haven't. In fact, in one California study, cases have continued to climb. So thimerosal is most likely not to blame.

Another point that has been made is that there are so many vaccines now that we are stressing out our bodies' immune systems. Again, this concern is unfounded.

Vaccines are injections of viral proteins. Our bodies see the proteins and raise antibodies to them. Then when a virus invades, we have antibodies that recognize the virus and target it for destruction.

It is the number of viral proteins that matter in terms of taxing the body's immune system and not the number of vaccinations. All of the current vaccines put together do not have as many viral proteins as the old smallpox vaccine (150 vs. 200). So the number of vaccines is unlikely to be the issue.

What all of this means is that vaccines are probably not responsible for the significant increase in the number of cases of autism. What is responsible? No one knows for sure.

It may be that the rise just comes from all of us recognizing the symptoms more. Or it could be due to some cause we don't know about or understand.

What we do know is that vaccines save many lives. I assume no one wants to go back to the early 20th century when polio epidemics swept the country. For example, 2,500 cases of polio ended up at one Los Angeles hospital between May and November of 1934. And in 1952, the U.S. had 21,000 cases of paralytic polio.

We can prevent this sort of thing from happening by making sure everyone is vaccinated. And yet there are people who choose to hide behind the people who take the miniscule risk of getting vaccinated.

Is this a matter of free choice? Should parents be allowed to opt out of vaccinating their children even if it risks society at large?

One idea, I suppose, is to have people who choose not to be vaccinated to sign a waiver saying they accept full responsibility for their actions. In practice this would mean that health insurance and the government would not be responsible for their children's health care bills if they become ill with one of the diseases they refused to be vaccinated against.

And if your infant, grandma, or immuno-suppressed cousin came down with a disease these folks refused to be vaccinated against, then you could sue the un-vaccinated for damages. The common good isn't enough to encourage these folks. Perhaps threats to their pocketbook will be.

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