Long-awaited settlement reached over use of “stolen” cells belonging to Henrietta Lacks

The family of Henrietta Lacks has reached a settlement with a biotechnology company that continually used her cells, according to the family's lawyer Ben Crump. 

In 1951, doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Maryland collected cancer cells from Lacks, a Black woman, without her knowledge. They did so while Lacks was getting a biopsy, during which they discovered a tumor in her cervix. 

Known as HeLa cells, they were the first human cells to be successfully cloned. Since then, HeLa cells have played a pivotal role in modern medicine, enabling numerous scientific breakthroughs, including the development of genetic mapping and the polio and COVID-19 vaccines. 

However, the Lacks family never received any compensation as a result of the cells' use. The family's lawyers argued that Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., a Massachusetts-based biotech firm, “continued to commercialize the results well after the origins of the HeLa cell line became well known,” according to the Associated Press. 

“It is outrageous that this company would think that they have intellectual rights property to their grandmother’s cells. Why is it they have intellectual rights to her cells and can benefit billions of dollars when her family, her flesh and blood, her Black children, get nothing?” Crump said in October 2021. 

The complaint filed by Lacks' grandchildren and other descendants argued that her case illustrated a broader issue of racism within the American medical system, reflecting a history of medical experimentation and racism against Black people. 

"People need to understand that racism is not just an outward expression of someone's hate for another person based on their race," Jessica Shepherd, a women's health expert and OB/GYN, said in an April 2023 Health article. "It is how it affects the infrastructure of the U.S., and that invades into health care." 

In the same Health report, Nicole C. Woitowich, chair of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Science Outreach and Communication Committee, said the use of Lacks' cells without her or her family's permission can be “seen as one of the most egregious abuses of the biomedical research community.” 

Johns Hopkins Hospital has also acknowledged Lacks’ immense contribution to modern medicine and the hospital’s culpability in her story, writing on their website, “Having reviewed our interactions with Henrietta Lacks and with the Lacks family over more than 50 years, we found that Johns Hopkins could have – and should have – done more to inform and work with members of Henrietta Lacks’ family out of respect for them, their privacy and their personal interests. Though the collection and use of Henrietta Lacks’ cells in research was an acceptable and legal practice in the 1950s, such a practice would not happen today without the patient’s consent.” 

The terms of the agreement are confidential, according to both Crump and representatives for Thermo Fisher. The settlement was announced on August 1, which would have been Lacks’ 103rd birthday. “There couldn’t have been a more fitting day for her to have justice, for her family to have relief,” said Lacks' grandson Alfred Lacks Carter Jr., via the AP.

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Unfortunately, Lacks and her family's experience is not an isolated case. History has shown several instances where Black people's cells and bodies were used without their consent. Perhaps the most notorious example of experimentation on Black bodies was the 1932 U.S. Public Health Service Syphilis Study in Tuskegee, Alabama, where 600 Black men were deceived about their treatment for syphilis. The study continued for 40 years, and those individuals were denied proper medical care, even when it was available, in that timeframe. And in October 2022, the city of Philadelphia issued a formal apology for unethical medical experiments that were conducted mostly on Black inmates at the local Holmesburg Prison from the ‘50s through the ‘70s, in which hundreds of incarcerated people were exposed to viruses, fungus, asbestos, and chemical agents, including a component of Agent Orange.