The immortal remains of Mrs. Henrietta Lacks aka Helen Lane

I recently heard about the so called HeLa-Cells, which are often used for research purposes in laboratoraties worldwide.
1951, the original cells have been taken from a person called Henrietta Lacks, whose name has been changed to Helen Lane by the hospital in charge, and have been the very first human cells that have been used to establish a permanent cell culture. Henrietta Lacks died by cancer 8 months after the extraction.
The thing is that today, after cultivating the original cells over a long time, the amount of cells currently existing exceeds the body volume of Henrietta Lacks a hundred times and more…

picture taken from http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeLa-Zellen