Henrietta Lacks had to use the back entrance of the hospital where she was treated because she was Black. Her cells were stolen from her and used by various hospitals, universities, technology and biomedical companies that amassed staggering financial gains—which her living relatives have had to fight for DECADES to receive a tiny fraction of.
The HPV vaccine. Genetic mapping. The polio vaccine. All of these medical miracles were made possible by Henrietta Lacks, a Virginia woman whose cells were taken without her permission in the early 1950s and used for an enormous range of medical research over the decades that followed. Now more than 70 years later, her family is finally being financially compensated. On Monday, Lacks’ living relatives reached a history-making settlement with Thermo Fisher Scientific, a Massachusetts-based biotech company worth more than $216 billion.
While the contents of the settlement are confidential, the family spoke at a press conference in Baltimore on Tuesday—what would’ve been Lacks’ 103rd birthday.
“I can think of no better present…than to give her family some measure of respect for Henrietta Lacks, some measure of dignity for Henrietta Lacks, and most of all some measure of justice for Henrietta Lacks,” said famed civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who represented the family in the lawsuit.
In 1951, Lacks, a 31-year-old Black woman and mother of five, was being treated for cervical cancer in a segregated ward at Maryland’s John Hopkins hospital. During her treatment, a white male doctor took samples from her tumor without her consent. Once it was found that her cells could replicate outside of her body—the very first discovery of its kind—the cells were distributed to other researchers. (source)
