Chapter 24: “Least They Can Do”
What started as Microbiological Associates grew to become part of several other, larger com-
panies, including Whittaker Corp, BioWhittaker, Invitrogen, Cambrex, BioReliance, and Avista
Capital Partners; for the profiles of those companies and others that sell HeLa, see One-
Source CorpTech Company Profiles or Hoover.com.
For HeLa pricing information, search the product catalogs of any number of biomedical
supply companies, including Invitrogen.com.
For patent information, search for HeLa in Patft.uspto.gov.
For information on the ATCC as a nonprofit, including financial statements, search for
American Type Culture Collection on Guidestar.org; for its HeLa catalog entry, visit Atcc.org
and search for HeLa.
For information on HeLa-plant hybrids, see “People-Plants,” News-week, August 16, 1976;
C. W Jones, I. A. Mastrangelo, H. H. Smith, H. Z. Liu, and R. A. Meck, “Interkingdom Fusion
Between Human (HeLa) Cells and Tobacco Hybrid (GGLL) Protoplasts,” Science, July 30,
1976.
For an account of Dean Kraft’s attempts to kill HeLa cells using “psychic healing,” and thus
cure cancer, see his book, A Touch of Hope, as well as related videos on YouTube.com
(available by searching for Dean Kraft).
For the research done on the Lacks family’s blood samples, see S. H. Hsu, B. Z. Schac-
ter, et al., “Genetic Characteristics of the HeLa Cell,” Science 191, no. 4225 (January 30,
1976). That research was funded by NIH Grant number 5P01GM019489–020025.