Biotech Company Settles With Family of Henrietta Lacks, Origin of HeLa Cells

August 1st, 1:49 PM EDT

A photo of Henrietta Lacks is shown in the living room of her grandson, Ron Lacks, in 2017

MGN via Photo by Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post via Getty Images

BALTIMORE (NEWSnet/AP) — More than 70 years after doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital took Henrietta Lacks’ cervical cells without her knowledge, her descendants have reached a settlement with a biotechnology company.

Tissue taken from the Black woman’s tumor before she died of cervical cancer became the first human cells to be successfully cloned. While most cell samples died shortly after being removed from the body, her cells survived and thrived in laboratories. As a result, HeLa cells have become a cornerstone of modern medicine, contributing to the development of the polio vaccine, genetic mapping and even COVID-19 vaccines.

Despite that 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. Lawyers for her family argued that Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., of Waltham, Massachusetts, continued to commercialize the results well after the origins of the HeLa cell line became well known.

The story was told in a book by Rebecca Skloot, “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” and the family filed a lawsuit in 2021.

The settlement came after negotiations Monday at the federal courthouse in Baltimore. Some of Lacks’ grandchildren were among the family members who attended the talks.

Lacks died at age 31 in the “colored ward” of Johns Hopkins Hospital and was buried in an unmarked grave.

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