Mary Kubicek worked as a lab assistant to George Gey throughout much of his journey finding and growing the first immortal human cells. She began working with Gey as a twenty-one year old, very soon after receiving a physiology degree. Mary’s duties as an assistant were focused around handling the tissue samples that were brought to the lab from TeLinde’s patients, which required advanced dexterity and strength for precision in tweezing and pipetting. When Mary first arrived at the lab after being hired by Gey, none of the cells that had been previously cultivated had lived. However, Kubicek was the one to cultivate the famous cells of Henrietta Lacks. In regards to the ethical controversy over the HeLa cells, she is well known for her identification of Henrietta Lacks as a real human being after seeing her red nail polish still on Lack’s toenails in the morgue.
As an eager, young scientist who was new to the professional world when I came to work under George Gey, I don’t remember the controversy as referred to by David Korn ever occurring to me. Obviously I understood that the tissue samples and cells that we were working with in the lab had come from people, but neither the connection between the people and the lab work nor the ethical controversy that arose from the HeLa cells hadn’t crossed my mind at the beginning stages of our work. The first time I tied the HeLa cells to their original owner was when I went to see Lack’s body in the morgue and noticed her red toenail polish. Much later on in life, after George had passed away, I was asked to speak at the New Shiloh Baptist Church in Turner Station about the HeLa cells. Many of the people there, including the extended Lacks family, asked who was making the money. I responded to these accusations by telling them about how throughout our research, George had truly done everything simple for the good of science. Thus, as long as everyone benefits equally and nobody is explicitly harmed in the process, I do agree with the statement.
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