This country has a long legacy of stealing from Black people and not giving them their due compensation.

The story of Henrietta Lacks is just one of those stories.

Saw this news:

Breaking overnight: Henrietta Lacks’ family reaches historic settlement, wins compensation for her stolen cells, by @Calefati https://t.co/vy0inF6jP5

— Justin Fenton (@justin_fenton) August 1, 2023

Lacks family celebrates HeLa settlement
Biotech company profited selling products derived from Baltimore County resident’s cells
By Angela Roberts and Dan Belson

The family of Henrietta Lacks agreed Monday to settle its lawsuit against Thermo Fisher Scientific, a Massachusetts-based biotechnology company that sold products derived from the Baltimore County resident’s cells, according to civil rights attorney Ben Crump.

The terms of the settlement are confidential, Crump said in a statement shortly before midnight Monday.

“The parties are pleased that they were able to find a way to resolve this matter outside of Court and will have no further comment about the settlement,” said Crump, who was hired in 2021 by Lacks’ family to explore litigation against biotech companies that profit from HeLa cells — an immortal cell line derived from a sample taken from the Turner Station resident over 70 years ago at the Johns Hopkins Hospital.

Thermo Fisher sent an identical statement Tuesday morning to The Baltimore Sun.The case was sent to Magistrate Judge J. Mark Coulson last week and was scheduled for a settlement conference Monday morning. The hearing was closed to the public and ran until late in the evening.
Lacks’ grandchildren and other descendants gathered Tuesday morning at Canton Waterfront Park with Crump and other members of the legal team to celebrate the settlement and mark what would have been Lacks’ 103rd birthday.

The fight isn’t over against those who profit from the HeLa cell line, the attorneys said.
“Those who choose to sell, mass produce, without their permission or consent, without compensation to the family — well, we’ll see them in court,” said Chris Ayers, Crump’s co-counsel and a partner at the New Jersey-based law firm Seeger Weiss.
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But Lacks’ family and their legal team — led by Crump — said the multibillion-dollar company continues to unjustly profit from the cells every time it cultivates, sells and is paid for newly replicated cells in the line. Thermo Fisher, the family alleged in their complaint, is treating Lacks’ cells as “chattel to be bought and sold.”
Lacks, a Black tobacco farmer and mother of five who lived in Turner Station, died shortly after her diagnosis, at 31 years old. But her cells — which Johns Hopkins doctors took from her without her knowledge or consent — lived on, becoming the first to survive outside a body in a laboratory. The cells, known as HeLa cells, are still replicating in laboratories today, some seven decades after Lacks’ death.

HeLa cells, the first “immortal” cell line, have been used in countless biomedical breakthroughs. They helped doctors eradicate polio and map the human genome, as well as develop HPV vaccines, in vitro fertilization and — more recently — COVID-19 vaccines.

The cell line also was the first to be commercialized, becoming the building blocks for a multibillion-dollar industry based on buying and selling tissues and cells and patenting genes. Lacks’ legacy went without much public recognition for decades until journalist Rebecca Skloot chronicled the story of her cells in the book “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” which Oprah made into a 2017 movie.

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“We are proceeding forward on a well established legal principle of unjust enrichment,” Crump said. “The plan moving forward is to make these pharmaceutical companies do the right thing. I mean, it’s not a very difficult ask, when you think of the massive amounts of wealth that they have accumulated from using and studying and researching vaccines and medicines based on this Black woman’s genetic materials.”

Who is Henrietta Lacks, you might ask?

On this day in 1920, Henrietta Lacks was born.

Her cells were taken without her knowledge in 1951 (HeLa cells) and became one of the most important tools in medicine. They became vital for developing the polio vaccine, cloning, gene mapping, vitro fertilization & more

A THREAD pic.twitter.com/pI1NjK9Pow

— AFRICAN & BLACK HISTORY (@AfricanArchives) August 1, 2023

Almost every breakthrough in science since 1951 has used Ms. Lacks’ cells. Wrap your mind around that. And, that they were taken WITHOUT HER PERMISSION.

Henrietta Lacks was black woman who unknowingly was the source of cells (from her cancerous tumor) which were cultured by George Otto Gey to create the 1st known human immortal cell line for medical research. pic.twitter.com/w0XB81NIAU

— AFRICAN & BLACK HISTORY (@AfricanArchives) August 1, 2023

But, after giving birth to her fifth child, Joseph, Henrietta started bleeding abnormally and profusely. Her local doctor tested her for syphilis, which came back negative, and referred her to Johns Hopkins.

— AFRICAN & BLACK HISTORY (@AfricanArchives) August 1, 2023

He cut off a small part of the tumor and sent it to the pathology lab. Soon after, Jones discovered she had a malignant epidermoid carcinoma of the cervix Stage 1 (cervical cancer). pic.twitter.com/HWy94iWrGK

— AFRICAN & BLACK HISTORY (@AfricanArchives) August 1, 2023

During her radiation treatments for the tumor, two samples of Henrietta's cervix were removed— a healthy part and a cancerous part— WITHOUT HER PERMISSION.

— AFRICAN & BLACK HISTORY (@AfricanArchives) August 1, 2023

Death:
In significant pain and without improvement, Lacks returned to Hopkins on August 8th for a treatment session but asked to be admitted. She remained at the hospital until her death at the age of 31.

— AFRICAN & BLACK HISTORY (@AfricanArchives) August 1, 2023