- Family of Henrietta Lacks settles lawsuit against Thermo Fisher Scientific The Associated Press
- Family of Henrietta Lacks Settles With Biotech Company That Used Her Cells The New York Times
- Henrietta Lacks’ family settles lawsuit after cells used for countless medical breakthroughs CBS News
- Henrietta Lacks’ family settles with company in lawsuit over ‘immortal’ cell line Maryland Daily Record
- The family of Henrietta Lacks, whose stolen cancer cells changed medicine, settles lawsuit Yahoo News
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WHO honors the late Henrietta Lacks for her contributions to scientific research
Lacks, a Black woman, was suffering from cervical cancer when she was being treated at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in 1951. A surgeon removed cells from her cervix without her consent during a procedure and that sample enabled a doctor at the hospital to create the first human cell line to reproduce outside the body.
The cell line, now known as HeLa cells, allowed scientists to experiment and create life-saving medicine including the polio vaccine, in-vitro fertilization and gene mapping as well as helped advance cancer and AIDS research.
Lacks, 31, died that same year from cancer, but her influence on the medical science field lived on, leading to the WHO Director-General’s award.
“In honouring Henrietta Lacks, WHO acknowledges the importance of reckoning with past scientific injustices, and advancing racial equity in health and science,” Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement. “It’s also an opportunity to recognize women — particularly women of colour — who have made incredible but often unseen contributions to medical science.”
Several of Lacks’ grandchildren, great-grandchildren and other family attended the award ceremony at the WHO office in Geneva. Her 87-year-old son, Lawrence Lacks, Sr., accepted the award on her behalf.
“We are moved to receive this historic recognition of my mother, Henrietta Lacks — honouring who she was as a remarkable woman and the lasting impact of her HeLa cells. My mother’s contributions, once hidden, are now being rightfully honored for their global impact,” Lawrence Lacks said in a statement.
“My mother was a pioneer in life, giving back to her community, helping others live a better life and caring for others,” he added. “In death she continues to help the world. Her legacy lives on in us and we thank you for saying her name — Henrietta Lacks.”
Family sues biotechnical company for nonconsensual use of her cells
At the time of Lacks’ procedure, taking cells from people without their consent wasn’t against protocols.
Earlier this month, Lacks’ family filed a lawsuit against Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. for unjust enrichment from the nonconsensual use and profiting from her tissue sample and cell line.
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.”
While the origin of HeLa cells was not clear for years, Lacks’ story has become widely known in the 21st century. It was the subject of a best-selling book, “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” which was published in 2010, and a subsequent movie of the same name starring Oprah Winfrey. The US House of Representatives has recognized her nonconsensual contribution to cancer research, and John Hopkins holds an annual lecture series on her impact on medicine.
The lawsuit claims that with this wide recognition, there is no way that Thermo Fisher Scientific could say it didn’t know the history behind its products containing HeLa cells and points to a page on the company’s website that acknowledges the cells were taken without Lacks’ consent. According to the lawsuit, there are at least 12 products marketed by Thermo Fisher that include the HeLa cell line.
Thermo Fisher Scientific generates annual revenue of approximately $35 billion, according to its website. CNN has reached out to the company for comment.
CNN’s Taylor Romine contributed to this report.
WHO honours Henrietta Lacks, whose cells changed medicine | Health News
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has honoured Henrietta Lacks, recognising the world-changing legacy of a Black woman whose cancer cells have provided the basis for life-changing medical breakthroughs but were taken without her knowledge or consent.
Researchers took tissues from Lacks’s body when she sought treatment for cervical cancer at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore in the 1950s, establishing the so-called HeLa cells that became the first ‘immortal line’ of human cells to divide indefinitely in a laboratory.
In recognising Henrietta Lacks, the WHO said it wanted to address a “historic wrong”, noting the global scientific community once hid her ethnicity and her real story.
“WHO acknowledges the importance of reckoning with past scientific injustices, and advancing racial equity in health and science,” Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. “It’s also an opportunity to recognise women – particularly women of colour – who have made incredible but often unseen contributions to medical science.”
Lacks died of cervical cancer at the age of just 31 in October 1951 and her eldest son, 87-year-old Lawrence Lacks, received the award from the WHO at its headquarters in Geneva. He was accompanied by several of her grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and other family members.
“We are moved to receive this historic recognition of my mother, Henrietta Lacks – honouring who she was as a remarkable woman and the lasting impact of her HeLa cells. My mother’s contributions, once hidden, are now being rightfully honoured for their global impact,” Lacks said.
“My mother was a pioneer in life, giving back to her community, helping others live a better life and caring for others. In death she continues to help the world. Her legacy lives on in us and we thank you for saying her name – Henrietta Lacks.”
Tedros noted that Black people like Henrietta Lacks suffered racial discrimination in healthcare, and the problem remained in many parts of the world today.
“Henrietta Lacks was exploited. She is one of many women of colour whose bodies have been misused by science,” he said. “She placed her trust in the health system so she could receive treatment. But the system took something from her without her knowledge or consent.”
Changed lives
The WHO chief said women of colour continued to be disproportionately affected by cervical cancer, and that the COVID-19 pandemic had exposed the continuing health inequities affecting marginalised communities around the world. Studies from various countries show that Black women are dying of cervical cancer at several times the rate of white women, while 19 of the 20 countries with the highest cervical cancer burdens are in Africa, he said.
The HPV vaccine, which protects against a range of cancers, including cervical cancer, is now being routinely given to many girls worldwide and there are hopes that the disease can be eliminated.
However, the WHO says that as of 2020, less than 25 percent of low-income countries and less than 30 percent of lower-middle-income countries had access to the HPV vaccine as part of their national immunisation programmes, compared with more than 85 percent of high-income countries.
“It is unacceptable that access to the life-saving HPV vaccine can be shaped by your race, ethnicity or where you happen to be born,” said Dr Princess Nothemba (Nono) Simelela, a special adviser to Tedros.
“The HPV vaccine was developed using Henrietta Lacks’s cells. Although the cells were taken without her consent and without her knowledge, she has left behind a legacy that could potentially save millions of lives. We owe it to her and her family to achieve equitable access to this groundbreaking vaccine.”
Lacks, who lived near Baltimore with her husband and five children, went to Johns Hopkins after experiencing severe vaginal bleeding, where she was diagnosed with cervical cancer.
The HeLa cell line was developed from her tumour and the cells were mass-produced, for-profit, without recognition to her family who only found out that they had been used for science in the 1970s. Her life and legacy were documented in the book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, which was later made into a film.
Earlier this month, Lacks’s estate moved to sue a pharmaceutical company that had used the HeLa cell line. The action said the company made a “conscious choice” to mass-produce the cells and profit from a “racially unjust medical system”, the Reuters news agency reported.
More than 50,000,000 metric tonnes of HeLa cells have been distributed around the world since they were taken from Lacks, according to the WHO.
As well as HPV, the cell line has been crucial to the development of the polio vaccine and drugs for HIV/AIDS, haemophilia, leukaemia, and Parkinson’s disease. It has also led to breakthroughs in reproductive health, including in vitro fertilisation, and has been used in thousands of studies, including for COVID-19.
“The fight to eliminate cervical cancer is part of the larger fight for human rights,” said Dr Groesbeck Parham, who participated in the civil rights movement as a teenager in Alabama and is now a clinical expert for WHO’s cervical cancer elimination initiative.
“Through her immortal cells, Mrs Henrietta Lacks speaks to us, also calling our attention to the millions of young women and mothers in low-income countries who still continue to die from cervical cancer because they cannot access and afford to purchase the life-saving medicines, technologies and medical procedures that are readily available in high-income countries. The questions being raised by the spirit and legacy of Mrs Henrietta Lacks are: ‘Why does this situation exist?’, ‘What are the solutions?’, and ‘When are you going to implement them?’”
Henrietta Lacks, Whose Cells Were Taken Without Her Consent, Is Honored by W.H.O.
In 1951, Henrietta Lacks, a Black mother of five who was dying of cervical cancer, went to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore for treatment.
Without her knowledge or consent, doctors removed a sample of cells from the tumor in her cervix. They gave the sample to a researcher at Johns Hopkins University who was trying to find cells that would survive indefinitely so researchers could experiment on them.
The invasive procedure led to a world-changing discovery: The cells thrived and multiplied in the laboratory, something no human cells had done before. They were reproduced billions of times, contributed to nearly 75,000 studies and helped pave the way for the HPV vaccine, medications used to help patients with H.I.V. and AIDS and, recently, the development of Covid-19 vaccines.
On Wednesday, 70 years after Ms. Lacks died in the “colored ward” at Johns Hopkins Hospital and was buried in an unmarked grave, the World Health Organization honored the contribution she unknowingly made to science and medicine.
During a ceremony in Geneva, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the W.H.O., presented the Director General Award to Ms. Lacks’s son Lawrence Lacks, who was 16 when his mother died on Oct. 4, 1951.
Victoria Baptiste, Ms. Lacks’s great-granddaughter, said the family was “humbled” by the presentation and the acknowledgment of the legacy of “a Black woman from the tobacco fields of Clover, Virginia.”
“Henrietta’s contributions, once hidden, are now being rightfully honored for their global impact,” Ms. Baptiste, a registered nurse, said.
Soumya Swaminathan, the chief scientist at the W.H.O., said about 50 million metric tons of the cells, known as HeLa cells, have been used by researchers and scientists around the world.
“This is just enormous, when you think about it,” Dr. Swaminathan said. “I cannot think of any other single cell line or lab reagent that’s been used to this extent and has resulted in so many advances.”
Ms. Lacks moved from Virginia to Baltimore with her husband, David Lacks, during the 1940s, looking for better opportunities for her family, according to the Henrietta Lacks Initiative, an organization founded by her grandchildren.
She went to Johns Hopkins for help after she experienced severe vaginal bleeding. She was 31 when she died, eight months after she learned she had cervical cancer.
Neither she nor her family were told that tissue samples from her tumor had been given to Dr. George Gey, a Johns Hopkins medical researcher.
The cells derived from the sample were uniquely resilient, doubling every 24 hours and managing to grow successfully outside the human body for more than 36 hours, according to the Henrietta Lacks Initiative.
The breakthrough thrilled scientists and researchers who used them to develop the first polio vaccine and produce drugs for other diseases, including Parkinson’s, leukemia and the flu.
But Ms. Lacks’s identity remained hidden by researchers. Her family did not find out about the use of her cells until 1973, when scientists called them for blood samples so they could study their genes, according to “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” a best-selling book by Rebecca Skloot that was also turned into a movie with Oprah Winfrey.
Ms. Lacks’s descendants have expressed pride in what her cells have gone on to achieve, but also fury over how she was treated by doctors. That fury has only been compounded by the commercialization of her cells.
Dr. Gey, who studied Ms. Lacks’s tissue, did not profit off his research. But over the decades, biotech companies have commercialized the cells and sold them even as Ms. Lacks’s family never received any compensation.
“Fortunes have been made,” Dr. Tedros said on Wednesday. “Science has advanced. Nobel Prizes have been won and most importantly, many lives have been saved.”
“No doubt Henrietta would have been pleased that her suffering has saved others,” he continued. “But the end doesn’t justify the means.”
On Oct. 4, her descendants sued Thermo Fisher Scientific, a biotechnology company that they accused “of making a conscious choice to sell and mass produce the living tissue of Henrietta Lacks,” according to the federal lawsuit.
The family said it was demanding that Thermo Fisher pay $9.9 million and “disgorge the full amount of its net profits obtained by commercializing the HeLa cell line” to Ms. Lacks’s estate.
During a news conference, Christopher Seeger, a lawyer for the family, suggested that more biotech companies could be sued.
Thermo Fisher “shouldn’t feel too alone, because they’re going to have a lot of company very soon,” Mr. Seeger said.
Thermo Fisher, which is based in Waltham, Mass., did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.
Dr. Tedros said on Wednesday that the injustice that began with the removal of Ms. Lacks’s cells had continued. He noted, for example, that the vaccines that help prevent cervical cancer and guard against Covid-19 remain inaccessible to poor countries.
Another speaker, Groesbeck Parham, a co-chair of the director general’s expert group on cervical cancer elimination, said that the most effective way to recognize Ms. Lacks’s contribution would be to stop inequities in health and science.
He said, “It is in this way that we truly honor Mrs. Henrietta Lacks and immortalize her miracle.”
‘Immortal’ Henrietta Lacks’ Family Says Biotech Firms Are Still Using Her Cells Like ‘Chattel’
Ron Lacks, the grandson of Henrietta Lacks—a 31-year-old Black woman in the 1950s whose stolen body tissue later became a cornerstone of modern medicine—said his family has been fighting for decades to get control of his grandmother’s legacy.
On Monday, the family filed their first federal lawsuit, along with civil-rights attorney Benjamin Crump, which they told The Daily Beast will hopefully give them the sort of ownership they’ve long been looking for.
“We’re just trying to take back control of Henrietta’s legacy,” Ron Lacks told The Daily Beast. “Everyone has been benefiting from Henrietta’s cells except for her family.”
In 1951 tissue from Lacks’ cancerous tumor was taken by white doctors at John Hopkins Hospital during treatment without her knowledge. When the cells turned out to be reproducing and living outside of her body, doctors turned it into a miracle cell line that has been used around the world to test new treatments and viruses. But Lacks, who died less than a year after her treatment, never gave permission for the tissue to be taken and for a long time her family has never profited from the discoveries.
Lack’s story became widespread after a 2010 bestselling book and an HBO feature starring Oprah in 2017. With renewed attention on Lacks, her family has tried to gain more control over the use of her HeLa cell line and get paid for the way it’s been bought and sold for breakthroughs in medicine.
The new lawsuit is against Maryland-based billion-dollar biotech company Thermo Fisher Scientific.
The company, despite the widespread knowledge of how Lacks’ cells were originally stolen, has continued to make a “conscious choice to sell and mass produce” the tissue of Lacks, the suit alleges. Despite the vast sums of money in revenue pulled in by the company—more than $30 billion a year according to their website—the suit says “Ms. Lacks’ Estate and family haven’t seen a dime.”
“Black people have the right to control their bodies,” the suit says. “And yet Thermo Fisher Scientific treats Henrietta Lacks’ living cells as chattel to be bought and sold.”
“This is not just about social justice, but this is about genetic justice.”
Thermo Fisher Scientific did not respond to a request for comment.
Although this is the first lawsuit Lacks’ estate has filed, it is not their first rodeo at trying to get control over Lacks’ legacy.
In 2013 they signed an agreement with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to give the family more control over scientists’ access to Lack’s genetic material and more say in how it is used. In 2018, the family attempted to apply for guardianship of the cells, but that failed. “We’ve been through numerous lawyers throughout the years with no success,” Lacks told The Daily Beast.
Although Lacks said he feels confident with the representation of Crump, medical policy and law experts who spoke to The Daily Beast said the family could face an uphill challenge thanks to scant case law.
Shobita Parthasarathy, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan, told The Daily Beast the legal challenge would be “difficult” for Lacks’ family because they were not directly harmed and have been unsuccessful in establishing ownership over the cells.
She also pointed to a similar case in 1990, where the California Supreme Court ruled a man whose blood and tissue samples were taken at a UCLA hospital, and used to create cell lines that were sold and contributed to research, did not have rights to share in profits made as a result of research that used his body samples.
Despite this, Parthasarathy said the cultural moment the country is in, in which questions about systemic racism and injustice are front and center—as well as concerns about privacy and data—could help Lacks’ estate.
“We are at this moment where we are paying attention to these questions about race. We are paying attention to questions about equity,” she said. “We’re starting to ask questions about the status of our data in all sorts of places.”
Crump, for his part, told The Daily Beast that he hopes Lacks’ lawsuit results in an “unprecedented” outcome that will affect future cases moving forward. “We believe that this is going to be a landmark,” he said. “This is not just about social justice, but this is about genetic justice.”
Nicole Woitowich, professor of medical social sciences at Northwestern University, said she was in support of the new effort.
She said the biomedical field has talked about moving away from using Lacks’ cell lines for research for years now, but that has happened yet.
“These cells are still widely used today,” she told The Daily Beast, adding that the cell lines were very easy to obtain. (According to Thermo Fisher Scientific’s website, HeLa cell lines can be bought for $2,000 online.)
Woitowich said that Lacks’ cell-line was revolutionary because it had been very difficult previously for scientists to keep human cells alive long enough to test them and for them to serve as a model for studies. But the “miraculous” long-lasting and regenerative properties of Lacks’ cells made it possible to keep growing them and sharing them across the world as a basis to study human cells outside of the body and test out new treatments, viruses and studies.
The NIH said in 2013 that Lacks’ cells have helped make some of the most important medical advances possible, including the development of vaccines, cancer treatments and in vitro fertilization techniques.
But Woitowich said this doesn’t mean the field should ethically go on using the cells.
She said the widespread understanding of how they were obtained, and the availability of less morally perilous alternative cell lines that are available for scientists to use, are good reasons for the field to move away from using Lacks’ cell line.
“From a bioethical perspective, it’s the right thing to move away from using this cell line. Knowing what we know today,” she said, “it’s just past time.”
Despite the pressure put on John Hopkins by Lacks’ Estate and others after Lacks’ story became more widespread in recent years, the University has pushed back on its culpability.
On a website dedicated to Lacks, the University said there were “no established practices” for getting consent from patients when taking cell or tissue samples for research in 1951. They said there also weren’t any regulations for how to use patient cells in new research.
“It was common practice at Hopkins for extra samples to be collected from cervical cancer patients during biopsies to be used for research purposes, regardless of race or socio-economic status,” the University wrote. The University also wrote that they have “never sold or profited” from the discovery and selling of Lacks’ cells. They said they do not own the cells.
Although Thermo Fisher Scientific is the first company to be sued by Lacks’ Estate, Crump told The Daily Beast there will likely be future lawsuits against other companies that use the ubiquitous cell line.
“Just like she was the cornerstone of much of modern medicine,” he told The Daily Beast, “I believe that her case will be the cornerstone in jurisprudence in this growing field called genetics justice.”