What things were discovered accidentally?
This lady’s death saved literally billions of people from becoming crippled, limbless and dead.
這位女士的死拯救了數十億人，使他們免於殘疾、無肢和死亡。
In 1951 Henrietta Lacks, a poor African American farmer and mother to five visited The Johns Hopkins Hospital, one of the few places in Maryland willing to treat African American patients. Henrietta Lacks complained to the doctors about random bleedings and pain in her groin and how she was worried it was going to affect her work.
1951年，亨麗埃塔·拉克斯(Henrietta Lacks)，一位貧窮的非裔美國農民，也是一位有5個孩子的母親，來到了約翰霍普金斯醫院，這是馬里蘭州為數不多的願意治療非裔美國病人的醫院之一。亨麗埃塔·拉克斯向醫生抱怨她腹股溝的不時出血和疼痛，她擔心這會影響她的工作。
Upon examination by gynecologist Dr. Howard Jones, the doctors found a massive malignant tumor on her cervix; because of this Henrietta started undergoing radium treatments for her cervical cancer (which back then was the best medical treatment available for this terrible disease).
在婦科醫生霍華德·瓊斯檢查後，醫生們在她的子宮頸上發現了一個巨大的惡性腫瘤；正因為如此，亨麗埃塔開始接受鐳治療她的子宮頸癌(這在當時是治療這種可怕疾病的最佳藥物療法)。
Alongside the treatment, a sample of her cancer cells was sent to Dr. George Gey's nearby tissue lab. For years, Dr. Gey, a cancer and virus researcher, had been collecting cells from patients who came to The Johns Hopkins Hospital with cervical cancer, but each sample taken quickly died in Dr. Gey’s lab, all apart from Henrietta Lacks’. Henrietta Lacks’ cells did not die, in fact they would replicate every 24 hours.
除了治療,她的癌細胞的樣本被送到喬治 · 格什溫博士附近的組織實驗室。多年來,格什溫博士，一位癌症和病毒研究員，一直在收集細胞來自約翰霍普金斯醫院的患者們的宮頸癌細胞，但每個收集來的樣本在博士的實驗室裡都很快死去，除了亨麗埃塔的細胞。亨麗埃塔·拉克斯的細胞沒有死亡，事實上它們每24小時就會複製一次。
This was an amazing medical breakthrough, for decades whenever anyone tried to experiment on human cells to find a cure for a disease they would simply die within hours, but with Henrietta Lacks’ cells, they survived and could grow again and again meaning that there was now nearly an infinite amount of these perfect cells alive if used correctly.
這是一個神奇的醫學突破，幾十年來，每當有人試圖在人類細胞上做實驗找到治癒疾病的方法，這些細胞都會在數小時內死亡，但因為亨麗埃塔的細胞存活了下來而且一次又一次分裂，這意味著研究者們現在擁有幾乎無限數量的這些完美的活細胞，如果方法得當的話。
The first things these cells were tested on was polio, and instead of dying straight away like most cells they survived. This allowed scientists to experiment on Henrietta's cells until they found a vaccine for one of the biggest children killers of the early 20th century: polio.
首先對這些細胞進行測試的是用於脊髓灰質炎，它們沒有像大多數細胞一樣立即死亡，而是存活了下來。這使得科學家們能夠在亨麗埃塔的細胞上進行實驗，直到他們發現了一種疫苗，可以治療20世紀早期最大的兒童殺手之一：小兒麻痺症。
Curing polio was only the beginning of Henrietta Lacks’ cells’ career -- by the end of the century her cells were used to create the first human-animal hybrids in 1965, Human Papillomavirus vaccines (also saving millions of lives), better hygiene improvements and better understanding of cells in general. Today scientists have grown as much as 50 million metric tons of her cells and they are being used to find cures/vaccines to things such as ebola, cancer and Typhoid.
治癒小兒麻痺症只是亨麗埃塔·拉克斯“細胞”事業的開始。到本世紀末，她的細胞在1965年被用於製造第一個人--動物雜交疫苗，人類乳頭瘤病毒疫苗(也挽救了數百萬人的生命)，衛生條件得到了更好的改善，對細胞的總體理解也得到了更好的理解。如今，科學家們已經培育了多達5000萬公噸的她的細胞，這些細胞正被用於尋找治療埃博拉、癌症和傷寒等疾病的方法或疫苗。
Henrietta Lacks unfortunately never found out about her contribution to science as she died only a couple of weeks after her treatment; her cells were also taken without her knowledge and her family only found out about what she did for medicine and science 20 years later.
不幸的是，亨麗埃塔·拉克斯從未發現自己對科學的貢獻，她在接受治療後僅僅幾周就去世了;她的細胞也在她不知情的情況下被取出，直到20年後她的家人才知道她在醫學和科學方面做了什麼。
Writer: Alex Foster.
作者：亞歷克斯·福斯特。
