Chapter 7: The Death and Life of Cell Culture
For the television segment featuring George Gey, see “Cancer Will Be Conquered,” Johns
Hopkins University: Special Collections Science Review Series (April 10, 1951).
For additional reading on the history of cell culture, see Culturing Life: How Cells Became
Technologies, by Hannah Landecker, the definitive history; also see The Immortalists:
Charles Lindberg, Dr. Alexis Carrel, and Their Daring Quest to Live Forever, by David M.
Friedman. For a general over view of Hopkins’s contributions to cell culture, see “History of
Tissue Culture at Johns Hopkins,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine (1977).
To re-create the story of Alexis Carrel and his chicken heart, I relied on these sources and
many others: A. Carrel and M. T Burrows, “Cultivation of Tissues in Vitro and Its Technique,”
Journal of Experimental Medicine (January 15, 1911); “On the Permanent Life of Tissues Out-
side of the Organism,” Journal of Experimental Medicine (March 15, 1912); Albert H. Ebeling,
“A Ten Year Old Strain of Fibroblasts,” Journal of Experimental Medicine (May 30, 1922), and
“Dr. Carrel’s Immortal Chicken Heart,” Scientific American (January 1942); “The ‘Immortality’
of Tissues,” Scientific American (October 26, 1912); “On the Trail of Immortality,” McClure’s
(January 1913); “Herald of Immortality Foresees Suspended Animation,” Newsweek
(December 21, 1935); “Flesh That Is Immortal,” World’s Work 28 (October 1914); “Carrel’s
New Miracle Points Way to Avert Old Age!” New York Times Magazine (September 14,
1913); Alexis Carrel, “The Immortality of Animal Tissue, and Its Significance,” The Golden
Book Magazine 7 (June 1928); and “Men in Black,” Time 31, number 24 (June 13, 1938). The
Nobel Prize website also contains much useful information about Carrel.
For a history of cell culture in Europe, see W. Duncan, “The Early History of Tissue Cul-
ture in Britain: The Interwar Years,” Social History of Medicine 18, no. 2 (2005), and Duncan
Wilson, “‘Make Dry Bones Live’: Scientists’ Responses to Changing Cultural Representation
of Tissue Culture in Britain, 1918–2004,” dissertation, University of Manchester (2005).
The conclusion that Carrel’s chicken-heart cells were not actually immortal comes from in-
terviews with Leonard Hayflick; also J. Witkowski, “The Myth of Cell Immortality,” Trends in
Biochemical Sciences (July 1985), and J. Witkowski, letter to the editor, Science 247 (March
23, 1990).
Chapter 9: Turner Station