Embedded in the tragic history of Henrietta Lacks – a 31 old mother of five small children – the authors of a new Nature review show how closely both processes are being related. The main culprit seems to be genomic instability as shown by loss of heterozygosity. What has been particular new to me were the cross links to autophagy – the waste management of the cell that came into focus only recently in Crohns disease. Yea, yea.