startled the assembled scientists by stating that the HeLa cells possessed unique physical characteristics that resulted in the inadvertent contamination of innumerable other cell lines being studied by a multitude of technicians. The possibility or fact of that contamination of cell lines destroyed years of research, with millions of dollars having essentially been wasted.

Skloot notes in this section of her book the recognition on the part of the scientific community of the need to protect cultures from contamination through exposure to bacteria and viruses and that such contamination would undermine research efforts. Gartler’s findings, however, injected a major new threat to the integrity of cultures emanating from unique characteristics associated with the HeLa cell line. As described by Skloot in this chapter of her book,

It turned out Henrietta’s cells could float through the air on dust particles. They could travel from one culture to the next on unwashed hands or used pipettes; they could ride from lab to lab on researchers’ coats and shoes, or through ventilation systems. And they were strong: if just one HeLa cell landed in a culture dish, it took over, consuming all the media and filling all the space.

This revelation on the part of Gartler was devastating news to the rest of the scientific community involved in cell research. Rather than developing new cell lines, it was revealed, researchers had been merely “growing and regrowing HeLa.” Such was the outcome of Gartler’s research.

In the pages that follow, Skloot describes the reactions of members of the audience whose lives had been spent developing cell lines that, it was now apparent, were seriously, even fatally flawed. Eminent scientists were suddenly confronted with the very real possibility that their years of research had been tainted.

The unique abilities possessed by the HeLa cells, the cell line derived from an unsuspecting cancer patient named Henrietta Lacks, was the cells’ ability to move around either through the air or on the surfaces of clothes and hands. Researchers unaware that the cells were airborne and that they had been transported from one culture to another were astounded to learn that the cell lines they thought were unique were, in fact, variants of the HeLa line.