John Ings  wrote:

> In   1991 Leigh Van Valen and V.C. Maiorana published a paper
> [Evolutionary Theory 10: 71-74]  arguing that the human cancer cell
> known as the Hela cell, having bred true in labs all over the world
> for nearly half a century, deserved to be named a new species and
> proposed the name Helacyton gartleri. 
> 
> So I was wondering what sort of reception this argument has received
> in the years since. Has it been accepted? Rejected? Or does it simply
> languish as a taxonomic paradox?
> 
> And has the Hela cell itself mutated into sub species or varieties?

It could not have been half a century - Henrietta Lacks, whose cells
these were, was biopsied in the 60s.

I like HeLa, because by phylogenetic rules of some extreme Hennigians,
it means that we should drop the name _Homo sapiens_ as extinct, and
rename the branch that did not become unicellular... Homo acanceri?
-- 
John Wilkins
john_SPAM{at}wilkins.id.au   http://www.wilkins.id.au
"Men mark it when they hit, but do not mark it when they miss" 
                                               - Francis Bacon
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