Hello Internet,
A few weeks ago I made a list of five people I came across who changed the world.
It was a fun video to do, but there was one notable problem….
This week I’m going to make my contribution to karmic balance.
Let’s talk about some amazing women that made huge contributions to the way we live in and see the world.
Number one, Mary Montagu
Today unless you’re of those people, you enjoy the benefits of vaccinations.
Even more, I imagine you love living in a world without smallpox moving around and making a mess.
Mary Montagu was one of the people that pushed England towards an early form of vaccinations, as well as shifting the way many thought of what women could do.
Montagu is famous for being a noblewoman that traveled to and wrote about the Ottoman Empire.
Her writings were called the first example of work by a woman about the Muslim world.
She also introduced the Turkish method of inoculating against smallpox.
This involved taking the stuff from a smallpox pustule and getting it under the skin.
This would lead to a mild infection, but resulted in immunity.
This is in the 18th century, long before the first vaccines.
This traveler, and fan of public health also challenged the social order of the day.
She asserted that women could participate in the public and intellectual realms just as the men could.
Who knows how many Mary Montagus we missed out on for not taking her advice to heart.
Number two, Henrietta Lacks
Henrietta Lacks might be the only immortal person on earth.
Her story also shows the unfair practices of one’s ownership over their own body.
Lacks’ story begins in her last years of her life.
Some cells from a cancerous tumor showed a remarkable property.
They were essentially immortal.
Without her permission, this cell line became the subject and tool of many an experiment.
This cell line would go by the nickname HeLa after her name.
One of the first applications of the HeLa line for science, was used for developing a working vaccine for polio.
When Jonas Salk needed to test the vaccine, Lacks’ cells were put in the first cell multiplication factory.
In 1955, her cells were the first to be cloned.
There was a huge demand on these amazing immortal cells.
They’ve been used in cancer and aids research, poison and radiation testing, and early attempts to map genes.
It’s now anticipated they have grown 20 tons of Henrietta’s cells.
It actually wasn’t until scientists went to find blood samples from her family, that Henrietta Lacks’ family even found out that her cells had been taken and used without permission.
It was not general practice at the time to ask.
By the 1980's her cells were a commercial enterprise.
Health records were taken, and her DNA was published in 2013 by German scientists all without permission.
It actually wasn’t until later that year that Lacks’s family finally won control over Henrietta’s genetic code, and recognition in scientific papers.
I think where Henrietta Lacks’ story is really interesting, is that her cells have lived through huge changes in the ethics of doing scientific research.
We went from a simple cell culture taken to do some research, to a commercial enterprise and copyrighted gene sequences.
In many ways, she is a perfect case study when discussing bioethics.
I also think we need to thank Henrietta for all the lives she saved without even knowing it.
Tune in next time to find the next three women who programmed, collected, and wrote their way into the most influential people in history.
What women from history do you find go woefully overlooked by the history books?
Tell us about her down below, and be sure to subscribe for part two!