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Tissue is removed from a woman in hospital. A scientist grows the tissue into a cell line. The cell line becomes one of the most important medical tools worldwide. Millions of lives are saved and millions of dollars made. The woman who made the breakthrough possible and her family are largely forgotten. Sound familiar?

That story describes the development of the famous HeLa cell line, grown from cancer tissue taken from a poor black woman without her consent, and brilliantly recorded by Rebecca Skloot in her best-seller The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (Crown, 2010). But it also neatly summarizes a separate tale that has echoes of the HeLa case and raises many of the same ethical questions of consent and obligation. Until now, that story has failed to reach the broad audience it deserves.

The cell line in this case is called WI-38, in which the initials represent the Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where the early work was done. WI-38 has arguably had an even bigger impact on science and medicine than the HeLa...