Henrietta Lacks, a Black mother of five, was dying of cervical cancer in 1951, when doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore took a sample of her cells without her knowledge or consent.
The invasive procedure led to a revolutionary discovery: His cells were the first to multiply in a laboratory, which had never been done with human cells, allowing researchers to develop vaccines for polio and coronavirus and treatments for illness including cancer, Parkinson’s and influenza.
But it was more than two decades before his family learned that the cells were fueling research in laboratories around the world, and even in spacecreating an unparalleled legacy in medicine.
On Tuesday, which would have been the 103rd birthday of Ms. Lacks, some of his descendants gathered at a news conference after settling with a biotechnology company they accused in a lawsuit of profiting from the cell line named for him, HeLa.
A grandson, Alfred Lacks Carter Jr., said, “it couldn’t be a more appropriate day for him to have justice and for his family to have relief.”
“It’s been a long battle, more than 70 years, and Henrietta Lacks got her day,” he said.
The family’s lawsuit, filed in US District Court in Maryland in October 2021, accuses the company, Thermo Fisher Scientific, of selling the cells and trying to secure intellectual property rights to the assisted products. of cells developed without compensating the family or seeking their permission or approval.
The terms of the settlement are confidential, attorneys for both parties said in a statement.
Thermo Fisher, based in Massachusetts, and the legal team for the family of Ms. Lacks released similar statements announcing the settlement.
“The parties are pleased that they have found a way to resolve this matter out of Court and have no further comment,” the statement said.
At the news conference, one of the family’s attorneys, Chris Ayers, suggested that similar cases would follow.
“The fight against those who profit, and choose to profit, from the deeply unethical and illegal history and origin of HeLa cells will continue,” he said.
Ms. Lacks was 31 years old when he died in October 1951.
Eight months earlier, she learned she had cervical cancer after being admitted to a racially segregated ward at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. Doctors removed a sample of cells from the tumor on her cervix without her knowledge or consent and gave them to a medical researcher at Johns Hopkins University. The researcher discovered that his cells were the first to multiply in a laboratory, outside the body.
Most cells die within a few days, but because Ms. Lacks continues to multiply, researchers and scientists can use them to do things like test how the polio virus infects cells and causes disease.
Research the use of HeLa cells has led to the development of treatments for diseases including cancer, Parkinson’s and influenza. Cells have also been used by researchers in the whole world and mentioned in more than 110,000 scientific publicationsaccording to the National Institutes of Health.
The family of Ms. Lacks was not told about the world-changing discovery and did not learn about the cell line until 1973, according to “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” a book by Rebecca Skloot that was made into a movie featuring Oprah Winfrey as the daughter of Mrs. Deborah is missing.
The descendants of Ms. Lacks said they were proud of his contribution but angry at how he was treated by the medical establishment. These failures worsened the commercialization of his cells, they said.
The family’s lawsuit against Thermo Fisher alleges that the company “made enormous profits by using the HeLa cell line — while Ms. Lacks’ Estate and family.”
“The choice of Thermo Fisher Scientific to continue selling HeLa cells despite the origin of the cell lines and the concrete damages it causes to the Lacks family can only be understood as a choice to accept a legacy of injustice racially embedded in the US research and medical systems,” the lawsuit said.
Thermo Fisher tried to dismiss the case, arguing that the suit was filed after the statute of limitations had expired, The Baltimore Sun reported. The family’s lawyers said the limit should not apply because the company continues to benefit financially from the cells.
