Family of Henrietta Lacks Settles With Biotech Company Accused Of Exploiting Her Cells

[Black Angel]

Family of Henrietta Lacks Settles With Biotech Company Accused Of Exploiting Her Cells

In their complaint, Lacks’ descendants argued that her treatment illustrates a much larger issue that persists into the present day: racism inside the American medical system.

By The Associated Press | Aug. 1, 2023, 11:22 AM EDT

More 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 they sued in 2021, accusing its 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, 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.

Doctors harvested Lacks’ cells in 1951, long before the advent of consent procedures used in medicine and scientific research today, but lawyers for her family argued that Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., of Waltham, Massachusetts, has continued to commercialize the results well after the origins of the HeLa cell line became well known.

The settlement agreement came after closed-door negotiations that lasted all day Monday inside the federal courthouse in Baltimore. Several members of the Lacks family were in on the talks.

Attorney Ben Crump, who represents the Lacks family, announced the settlement late Monday. He said the terms of the agreement are confidential.

“The parties are pleased that they were able to find a way to resolve this matter outside of Court and will have no further comment about the settlement,” Crump said in a statement.

Thermo Fisher representatives didn’t immediately respond to requests by phone and email from The Associated Press for comment on Tuesday.

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. This exceptional quality made it possible to cultivate her cells indefinitely — they became known as the first immortalized human cell line — making it possible for scientists anywhere to reproduce studies using identical cells.

The remarkable science involved — and the impact on the Lacks family, some of whom suffered from chronic illnesses without health insurance — were documented in a bestselling book by Rebecca Skloot, “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” and Oprah Winfrey portrayed her daughter in an HBO movie about the story.

Lacks was 31 when she died and was buried in an unmarked grave. A poor tobacco farmer from southern Virginia, she was raising five children when doctors discovered a tumor in her cervix and saved a sample of her cancer cells collected during a biopsy.

Johns Hopkins said it never sold or profited from the cell lines, but many companies have patented ways of using them.

In their complaint, Lacks’ grandchildren and other descendants argued that her treatment illustrates a much larger issue that persists into the present day: racism inside the American medical system.

“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.”

Thermo Fisher argued the case should be dismissed because it was filed after the statute of limitations expired, but attorneys for the family said that shouldn’t apply because the company is continuously benefitting from the cells.

In a statement posted to their website, Johns Hopkins Medicine officials said they reviewed all interactions with Lacks and her family after the 2010 publication of Skloot’s book. While acknowledging an ethical responsibility, it said the medical system “has never sold or profited from the discovery or distribution of HeLa cells and does not own the rights to the HeLa cell line,” while also acknowledging an ethical responsibility.

Crump, a civil rights attorney, has become well known for representing victims of police violence and calling for racial justice, especially in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder.

Last week, U.S. senators Chris Van Hollen and Ben Cardin, both Maryland Democrats, introduced a bill to posthumously award Lacks the Congressional Gold Medal.

“Henrietta Lacks changed the course of modern medicine,” Van Hollen said in a statement announcing the bill. “It is long past time that we recognize her life-saving contributions to the world.”

 

[Black Angel]

What makes this so fascinating is that her cells were even used in Covid vaccine research..

I am happy for the family though and I think the descendants of J. Marion Sims torture victims need to go after his estate over the fact that his ob/gyn findings were literally from the women he had kidnapped and bought from slave owners to test his procedures on w/o anesthesia on the Black women and then when he perfected them, he performed the same surgeries on White women with anesthesia. This was why his statue was covered in red paint and torn down from the medical school that honored this asshole.

The women he tortured and killed this way, never made a sound and this is literally the origin of medical discrimination today including the arcane belief that Black people don't feel pain and it is also the basis of Black people, including Black mothers not being taken seriously by doctors and turned away when they complain of pain and it is the reason why they are less likely to get pain meds after asking for them.

This is also the key reason why Black mothers and their babies are 3x more likely to die under the care of a White doctor and this came directly from the CDC. I say this because just as the STOLEN HeLa cells have contributed widely toward modern medicine, the same can be said for J. Marion Sims and his findings and claims about his victims have done for medical discrimination against Black people. And personally, and without saying much, this very thing is something WE recently had to worry about ourselves. This is LITERALLY a major factor in the Black maternal mortality rate in this country. This is also why Black people in general tend to distrust doctors and hospitals, which is why it was asinine for the anti-vaxxers to include Black people in their their quest to make preventable diseases great again. WE have a historical and legitimate reason for distrusting them, while the anti-vaxxers are just proud descendants of those that spread small pox intentionally to the Natives here. Same shit, different century.

Hopefully if more descendants go after the perpetrators in the same way Henrietta Lacks descendants did, that maybe things will change for the better for us in medicine.

It is a fascinating read and I am so happy for the family. But really changing the language to calling BLATANT THEFT AND PROFITEERING "exploitation" is bullshit and another example of the guilty white-washing their own crimes against Black people. And yeah, stuff like this is EXACTLY why our TRUE history is being banned from being taught in several states in this country.. just as it were with Mexicans, Natives, Jewish, LGBT+ and now Black people.

 

[Webster]

Took 'em long enough.
That said, Ms. Lacks' legacy has already been enshrined in terms of medical research and that will not change, regardless of the settlement above.