Henrietta Lacks’ family is suing a second company for unjustly profiting from her cells. Lacks was a Black mother of five who died of cervical cancer in October 1951 at 31. Following a tumor biopsy, doctors saved a sample of her cancer cells without telling her and passed them on to a medical researcher at Johns Hopkins University. Although most cells die quickly in the lab, Lacks’ continued to multiply and didn’t age. These “immortal” cells were named HeLa (after her first and last name) and were sent to labs
Over 70 years after Henrietta Lacks’ cervical cells were taken without her knowledge, her family finally settled with Thermo Fisher Scientific, a biotech company they say profited from them. Henrietta Lacks Lacks was a Black mother of five who died of cervical cancer in October 1951 at 31. She had learned she had cervical cancer eight months before her death when she was admitted to a racially segregated ward at John Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore. Following a tumor biopsy, doctors saved a sample of Lacks’ cancer cells without telling her and
