Cancer

Henreitta Lacks died of cervical cancer in 1951 , but not before scientists at Johns Hopkins took samples of her tumor . Because it was the first instance of an established cell line with " immortal " , your cells ( now called HeLa cells ) have been successfully used in several innovative experiments , including vaccines against polio and cloning . However , his story was not without controversy , because neither she nor her family gave permission for the cells to be harvested , and his family never benefited financially. In addition, a problem of contamination of HeLa cells led to an incident almost the Cold War.