When a thirty-one-year-old woman called Henrietta Lacks contracted cervical cancer and had a biopsy taken, the Geys found what they were looking for. George Gey faced the cameras and held up a vial containing cells cultured from Henrietta Lacks's cancer—the most robust and fastest-growing cells scientists had ever seen."It is possible that, from a fundamental study such as this," he said, "we will be able to learn a way by which cancer can be completely wiped out." Henrietta Lacks died from the cancer on the day that Gey went on TV. But, suddenly, cancer seemed like a prizefighter on the
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