Henrietta Lacks’ Family Reaches Second Lawsuit Settlement
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The family of a Black woman whose cervical cells were taken without her knowledge in 1951 and copied countless times since then has reached a settlement with another biotech company.
Novartis, a Swiss company, was accused in a lawsuit of profiting from Henrietta Lacks' cells, which were taken without her consent but led to significant advances in medical science.
Lacks' family never received any compensation and fought for years to obtain justice for the "stolen" cells.
Nearly three years ago, the family reached a settlement on undisclosed terms with Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., a Massachusetts-based biotech company.
Lacks, a 31-year-old mother from Baltimore, Maryland, began experiencing abdominal pain and abnormal bleeding in 1951. A gynecologist at Johns Hopkins Hospital examined her and found a large mass on her cervix.
Without her knowledge or permission, doctors sent a sample of her tumor to a medical research lab to treat her aggressive cervical cancer.
However, while almost all cell cultures die quickly in the lab, the cell cultures taken from Ms. Lacks continued to grow and did not age, making them "immortal." This meant that scientists around the world could repeat experiments using identical cells.
The cell line, named "HeLa" after the patient's first and last name, was sent to research labs around the world. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), HeLa cells led to the development of the polio vaccine and advances in HIV, cancer, and infertility research.
But the very properties that made these cells a scientific wonder also made them deadly. Months after her diagnosis, Lacks died of cancer at just 31 years old and was buried in an unmarked grave.
Seventy years after her death, her family filed a lawsuit against Novartis in the state of Maryland. Several other cases against other pharmaceutical companies are still ongoing.
Details of the new settlement have not yet been disclosed.
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Family members of Henrietta Lacks and Novartis are pleased to have found an out-of-court settlement of this matter involving Henrietta Lacks' estate," a joint statement from her family and Novartis said.
"The terms of the agreement are confidential."
Her family attorney, Ben Crump, told the New York Times that family members are pleased with the settlement.
"For the family and her grandchildren, this is certainly justice because people said they would never receive any benefits or compensation from her immortal HeLa cells, even though these pharmaceutical companies were making billions of dollars in profits."
He described the agreement as "a way of justice, a way to honor and respect the life that was taken."
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