Health & Wellness

Estate of Henrietta lacks sues biotechnical company for nonconsensual use of her cells

The estate of Henrietta Lacks — whose cloned cells have led to countless medical advances — is suing a pharmaceutical company for taking her cells for profit without her consent for the past 70 years.

Published

3 years ago

October 5, 2021

Unheard Voices Staff

Henrietta Lacks and Her Husband, David, ca. 1945 | Fair use image

The estate of Henrietta Lacks, the woman whose cells have been used for groundbreaking scientific research for decades, filed a lawsuit against Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. for unjust enrichment from the nonconsensual use and profiting from her tissue sample and cell line.

Lacks, a Black woman diagnosed with cervical cancer, had tissue taken from her cervix without her consent during a procedure at Johns Hopkins Hospital in 1951.

With the sample, a doctor at the hospital was able to create the first human cell line to reproduce outside the body.

Lacks died later that year from cancer at the age of 31.

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Estate of Henrietta Lacks sues biotech company

CNN Reports:
The cell line, now known as HeLa cells, gave scientists the ability to experiment and create life-saving medicine like the polio vaccine, in-vitro fertilization and gene mapping and helped move forward cancer and AIDS research.

But the lawsuit alleges that Thermo Fisher Scientific is knowingly profiting from the “unlawful conduct” of the Johns Hopkins doctors and that its “ill-gotten gains rightfully belong to Ms. Lacks’ Estate.”

It argues that the company is “making a conscious choice to sell and mass produce the living tissue of Henrietta Lacks, a Black woman, grandmother, and community leader, despite the corporation’s knowledge that Ms. Lacks’ tissue was taken from her without her consent by doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital and a racially unjust medical system.”

Lawsuit

Attorneys for the Lacks estate are requesting that the company give up “the full amount of its net profits obtained by commercializing the HeLa cell line to the Estate of Henrietta Lacks” as well as reasonable costs and expenses, which they estimate to be $250 billion, according to the lawsuit and court docket.

In addition, they are asking the court to order Thermo Fisher Scientific to permanently stop the use of HeLa cells without the permission of the Lacks’ estate and to create a trust for the estate of all company intellectual property and proceeds related to the use of the cells.