The Naked Truth/Jamala Rogers
The Stolen, Immortal Cells of Henrietta Lacks
Some financial compensation finally came to the descendants of Henrietta Lacks. After years of legal battles, the Lacks family reached an undisclosed settlement with Thermo Fisher Scientific. This is one of the main companies that used and profited from her "HeLa" cells. Henrietta Lacks should be a household name in the U.S. now. Sadly, her anonymity is connected to the racism in the medical field and the judicial system.
Henrietta Lacks was a poor, Black tobacco farmer in Virginia when she was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cervical cancer in 1951. During that time, doctors at Johns Hopkin Hospital removed cells from her body without her knowledge or permission. Her amazing cells were able to live outside her body and reproduce — the only human cell of its kind to ever do so. She died after a few sessions of radiation at the age of 34 years old. Her family didn’t find out the cells were being used and sold until decades later. It is estimated that billions have been made off the HeLa cells.
The stolen cells and their commercialization still raises serious ethical concerns, along with the persistent issues related to how Black and poor people are treated in the U.S. medical industrial complex. Horror stories about the experimentation on Black bodies are no secret. They’ve been passed down by African American families and communities for generations. They were well documented in journals and books such as Harriet Washington’s ”Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present” published in 2007.
It has also been well documented how HeLa cells have made life-saving differences in medicine. The genetic marvel has appeared in more than 111,000 scientific publications and led to over 17,000 patents. Richard Axel and Harald zur Hausen received Nobel prizes for their research related to the cells.
The HeLa cells have resulted in countless medical and scientific breakthroughs including research about the human genome, HIV/AIDS and the development of the polio and COVID-19 vaccines. Henrietta’s were the first human cells to go into space in 1960.
Johns Hopkins University always and disingenuously maintained they never profited from Henrietta’s cells. Their guilt led to the establishment of a memorial award and a university building in her name.
All this, yet there has been total resistance to admitting the theft and repairing the wrongdoing. The first genuine effort to bring the story of Henrietta Lacks to light came in 2010 with “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” by Rebecca Skloot. The book stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for seventy-five weeks. Then came the HBO movie in 2017 with a star-studded cast including Oprah Winfrey, Courtney Vance and Leslie Uggams.
The news of the financial settlement came on Henrietta’s birthday; she would’ve been 103 years old on August 1, 2023. The family has been on a long and rocky journey to get the recognition for Henrietta Lacks, the woman, and the compensation due from the illegal sale of her cells. Family members experienced health issues and had no health insurance; they would’ve benefitted from a swift and just settlement. Since the conditions of the civil suit are confidential, I can’t speculate if the descendants got their just share although I’m pretty sure the attorneys got their cut.
Thermo Fisher Scientific, the biotech giant, chose to settle rather than have all their business dealings come out in court. Before bowing to the settlement, it had the audacity to ask previous courts to dismiss the case. It argued that the family’s claims were too old. No, TFS, what’s too old is the racism that continues to perpetuate racial disparities and inequities. What’s too old is the inhumane way that Black and poor people get treated in this country, particularly in the medical and judicial systems. Deal with that.