The room sat silent, dumbfounded, until T. C. Hsu, the chair of Gartler’s conference session, spoke. Hsu was the University of Texas geneticist whose earlier work with HeLa and other cells had made it possible to discover the correct number of human chromosomes. “A few years ago I voiced some suspicion about cell-line contamination,” Hsu said. “So I am happy about the paper by Dr. Gartler and am also sure he has made many people unhappy.” He was right, and those people quickly began asking questions. “How long did you keep them in your laboratory?” one scientist asked, suggesting that Gartler
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