Henrietta Lacks, a Black woman, is arguably the most important posthumous contributor to medical research. In 1951, she died of cancer, but her cells, taken without her consent, showed a remarkable ability: they continued to reproduce, instead of dying out. They soon became a hot property among researchers, and led to a series of breakthroughs. Her contribution to science, however, was unacknowledged till 2010. Exactly on the 70th anniversary of her death last week, her descendents sued a pharmaceutical company and sought part of its profits.

The lawsuit filed in federal court in Baltimore accuses Thermo Fisher Scientific, a biotech firm, of using Lacks’s cells without approval from or payment to her family. Her descendents say the company thus deprived them of not only huge money but also “the knowledge that a loved one’s body has been treated with respect.” They have asked the court to order the company to pay a part of the profits: https://www.livescience.com/henrietta-lacks-hela-cell-lawsuit-thermo-fisher

When Lacks was diagnosed with cervical cancer at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore in 1951, doctors took samples from her cervix without her consent. She could not survive, but her cells did. Using them, scientists developed the polio vaccine and even some of the coronavirus vaccines. It is thanks to her that science has a better idea of diseases such as leukemia and AIDS. The cells helped researchers discover the effects of zero gravity in space and also create the human genome: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02494-z

The cells were tagged “HeLa”, but the full identity of its donor remained unknown – till 2010, when Rebecca Skloot published a critically acclaimed non-fiction, ‘The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks’: https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/henriettalacks/immortal-life-of-henrietta-lacks.html “No dead woman has done more for the living . . . A fascinating, harrowing, necessary book,” Hilary Mantel wrote in her review. In 2017, HBO produced a film version of it, starring Oprah Winfrey: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5686132/

It was then that Johns Hopkins admitted it should have informed the family earlier. It was also then that the family became aware of the possible legacy. They tried for long, but only recently found a lawyer – Ben Crump – who has represented the family of George Floyd: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/legal-issues/henrietta-lacks-family-sues-company/2021/10/04/810ffa6c-2531-11ec-8831-a31e7b3de188_story.html