Thermo Fisher Scientific settles with family of Henrietta Lacks, whose HeLa cells uphold medicine

By LEA SKENE and SARAH BRUMFIELD

The settlement came after closed-door negotiations that lasted all day Monday inside the federal courthouse in Baltimore. Some of Lacks’ grandchildren were among the family members who attended the talks. HeLa cells were discovered to have unique properties. While most cell samples died shortly after being removed from the body, her cells survived and thrived in laboratories. They became known as the first immortalized human cell line because scientists could cultivate her cells indefinitely. That meant scientists anywhere could reproduce studies using identical cells.

Lacks died at age 31 in the “colored ward” of Johns Hopkins Hospital. She was buried in an unmarked grave. “The exploitation of Henrietta Lacks represents the unfortunately common struggle experienced by Black people throughout history,” the complaint reads. “Too often, the history of medical experimentation in the United States has been the history of medical racism.”

Though her relatives hadn’t received financial compensation, they did reach an agreement with the National Institutes of Health in 2013 that gave them some control over how the DNA code from HeLa cells is used. The deal came after the family raised privacy concerns about making Lacks’ genetic makeup public.

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Thermo Fisher Scientific settles with family of Henrietta Lacks, whose HeLa cells uphold medicineBREAKING: The family of Henrietta Lacks is settling a lawsuit against a biotechnology company they accused of taking her cervical cells without her knowledge. They accused the company's leaders of reaping billions of dollars from a racist medical system. Tissue taken from the Black woman’s tumor before she died of cervical cancer became the first human cells to be successfully cloned. Reproduced infinitely ever since, HeLa cells have become a cornerstone of modern medicine.
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Thermo Fisher Scientific settles with family of Henrietta Lacks, whose HeLa cells uphold medicineMore than 70 years after doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital took Henrietta Lacks’ cervical cells without her knowledge, a lawyer for her descendants said they have reached a settlement with a biotechnology company that they accused of reaping billions of dollars from a racist medical system. Reproduced infinitely ever since, HeLa cells have become a cornerstone of modern medicine, enabling countless scientific and medical innovations, including the development of the polio vaccine, genetic mapping and even COVID-19 vaccines. Despite that incalculable impact, the Lacks family had never been compensated.
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