Henrietta Lacks’s family reaches settlement in extracted cell lawsuit

[ZiprHead]

Litigation focused on scientific breakthroughs and profits made on cells extracted without Lacks’s consent.

Descendants of Henrietta Lacks, the Black woman whose cells have been central to decades of important scientific breakthroughs, settled litigation with a biotechnology company that had allegedly profited from the cells despite knowing that they were extracted from her without her consent, attorneys for both parties said.

Terms of the litigation, filed against Thermo Fisher Scientific, were not released.

The parties released the same statement:
“Members of the family of Henrietta Lacks and Thermo Fisher have agreed to settle the litigation filed by Henrietta Lacks’ Estate in U.S. District Court in Baltimore. The terms of the agreement will be confidential. The parties are pleased that they were able to find a way to resolve this matter outside of Court and will have no further comment.”

A settlement conference had been scheduled for Monday, according to federal court records.

“Her cells were robbed from her body,” one of the family’s attorneys, Ben Crump, said at a news conference Tuesday morning, what would have been Lacks’s 103rd birthday.
Lacks was only 31 and an East Baltimore mother of five when she was diagnosed with cervical cancer in 1951. While being treated in a segregated ward at Johns Hopkins Hospital, a doctor took a sample of her tumor without her consent and gave it to a research team.

The team soon discovered the cells in her sample had a remarkable ability to grow outside the human body, opening up a universe of medical research. Johns Hopkins shared the “HeLa” cells with other researchers; vaccines for polio to covid-19 were developed with these cells, as were cancer treatments, in vitro fertilization.

Neither Lacks nor her family knew any of this. She died soon after her diagnosis on Oct. 4, 1951.
In 2013, German scientists sequenced Lacks’s genome.
For decades, they struggled to carry on without their mother. One of her daughters, Elsie, who was disabled, was institutionalized and died at 15 years old in 1955. In the 1970s, two decades after Lacks’s death, members of her family started getting strange phone calls from researchers requesting blood samples. Their medical histories were published in research papers without their knowledge. One night, at a dinner party, a guest asked family members if they were related to the source of the famous HeLa cells. That’s how they found out cells from their mother were still alive all over the world.

I hope the family made a fortune from this theft of their mother's property.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Is it normal to pay royalties for these sorts of things? If they offered her $10 at the time, she'd probably say whatever.

 

[Derec]

Is it normal to pay royalties for these sorts of things?

It certainly wasn't at the time. Face it, had the family not been black, there'd be no settlement. Let alone one that makes this greedy family "a fortune".
Yet another example of black privilege and how insane our society has become on the issue of race.

 

[Shadowy Man]

Is it normal to pay royalties for these sorts of things?

It certainly wasn't at the time. Face it, had the family not been black, there'd be no settlement. Let alone one that makes this greedy family "a fortune".
Yet another example of black privilege and how insane our society has become on the issue of race.

Had the family not been black they likely wouldn’t have stolen the cells from her in the first place. They possibly didn’t see her as enough of a person to require her consent. Black privilege, indeed.

 

[Derec]

Had the family not been black they likely wouldn’t have stolen the cells from her in the first place. They possibly didn’t see her as enough of a person to require her consent. Black privilege, indeed.

My understanding is that back then (Lacks died in 1951) there was no requirement for consent to use cell lines and that it would not have been handled differently no matter her color. Do you know otherwise?

 

[Shadowy Man]

Had the family not been black they likely wouldn’t have stolen the cells from her in the first place. They possibly didn’t see her as enough of a person to require her consent. Black privilege, indeed.

My understanding is that back then (Lacks died in 1951) there was no requirement for consent to use cell lines and that it would not have been handled differently no matter her color. Do you know otherwise?

So there should be a good record of white women getting their cells take for research without their consent, yes? They should sue, too, it would seem.

 

[Derec]

So there should be a good record of white women getting their cells take for research without their consent, yes? They should sue, too, it would seem.

I would think so. Cell cultures have been taken from patients all the time. The HeLa line is unusual because it is so long-lived and prolific. From the wiki page:

"The cells from Lacks' cancerous cervical tumor were taken without her knowledge, which was common practice in the United States at the time.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Is it normal to pay royalties for these sorts of things?

It certainly wasn't at the time. Face it, had the family not been black, there'd be no settlement. Let alone one that makes this greedy family "a fortune".
Yet another example of black privilege and how insane our society has become on the issue of race.

Well, that is an untestable assertion, but typical. I mean, the most obvious thing to ask, which you didn't because you are obsessed with women and race, is "How did they know she didn't consent?" Did the lab have some note with the original sample that read "Stole tumor cells from broad"?

Is it normal to pay royalties for these sorts of things?

It certainly wasn't at the time. Face it, had the family not been black, there'd be no settlement. Let alone one that makes this greedy family "a fortune".
Yet another example of black privilege and how insane our society has become on the issue of race.

Had the family not been black they likely wouldn’t have stolen the cells from her in the first place. They possibly didn’t see her as enough of a person to require her consent. Black privilege, indeed.

It made me wonder how many cells or whatever were collected from patients without their knowledge. Was race an issue in the process, if the process was even a thing.

 

[Shadowy Man]

So there should be a good record of white women getting their cells take for research without their consent, yes? They should sue, too, it would seem.

I would think so. Cell cultures have been taken from patients all the time. The HeLa line is unusual because it is so long-lived and prolific. From the wiki page:

"The cells from Lacks' cancerous cervical tumor were taken without her knowledge, which was common practice in the United States at the time.

Well there is now precedent for compensation for the donors. Though according to your hypothesis if the family of a white woman made a similar claim theirs would be denied. I guess we won’t know until it is tried.

 

[laughing dog]

The issue is that people made a large profit that could be directly traced to those particular cells.

The depiction of Ms Lack’s family as greedy taking advantage of their race to feed their greed is pure bigoted conjecture.

 

[Gospel]

While I can understand why some might argue that the family isn't entitled to financial compensation, what I find troubling is the apparent lack of consideration shown to the deceased, whose contribution has significantly advanced the healthcare industry and generated substantial financial gains for many. At the very least, providing for the healthcare needs of the deceased's immediate family would have been nice.

But that would be black privilege so never mind.

 

[TomC]

Well there is now precedent for compensation for the donors.

Or, there's precedent for blanket indemnifying of medical professionals.

My guess is that, here in the modern world, blanket legal permission for near anything is more likely than opening yourself up to scumbag lawyers by admitting a patient who refuses.
Tom

 

[Jarhyn]

Litigation focused on scientific breakthroughs and profits made on cells extracted without Lacks’s consent.

Descendants of Henrietta Lacks, the Black woman whose cells have been central to decades of important scientific breakthroughs, settled litigation with a biotechnology company that had allegedly profited from the cells despite knowing that they were extracted from her without her consent, attorneys for both parties said.

Terms of the litigation, filed against Thermo Fisher Scientific, were not released.

The parties released the same statement:
“Members of the family of Henrietta Lacks and Thermo Fisher have agreed to settle the litigation filed by Henrietta Lacks’ Estate in U.S. District Court in Baltimore. The terms of the agreement will be confidential. The parties are pleased that they were able to find a way to resolve this matter outside of Court and will have no further comment.”

A settlement conference had been scheduled for Monday, according to federal court records.

“Her cells were robbed from her body,” one of the family’s attorneys, Ben Crump, said at a news conference Tuesday morning, what would have been Lacks’s 103rd birthday.
Lacks was only 31 and an East Baltimore mother of five when she was diagnosed with cervical cancer in 1951. While being treated in a segregated ward at Johns Hopkins Hospital, a doctor took a sample of her tumor without her consent and gave it to a research team.

The team soon discovered the cells in her sample had a remarkable ability to grow outside the human body, opening up a universe of medical research. Johns Hopkins shared the “HeLa” cells with other researchers; vaccines for polio to covid-19 were developed with these cells, as were cancer treatments, in vitro fertilization.

Neither Lacks nor her family knew any of this. She died soon after her diagnosis on Oct. 4, 1951.
In 2013, German scientists sequenced Lacks’s genome.
For decades, they struggled to carry on without their mother. One of her daughters, Elsie, who was disabled, was institutionalized and died at 15 years old in 1955. In the 1970s, two decades after Lacks’s death, members of her family started getting strange phone calls from researchers requesting blood samples. Their medical histories were published in research papers without their knowledge. One night, at a dinner party, a guest asked family members if they were related to the source of the famous HeLa cells. That’s how they found out cells from their mother were still alive all over the world.

I hope the family made a fortune from this theft of their mother's property.

I am of two minds of this... One, that consent should be sought before accessing something not normally made publicly available.

Two, that NOBODY ought be able to claim *ownership* over DNA, not even the person whose body it originated from.

To me, the latter of these represents an important advancement in the ethics surrounding DNA usage, in that it would cut for-profit genetic research off at the knees, since none of its products could be owned any more than the DNA itself.

This is very important to me, because largely the profit motive is the major corruptor of DNA based research, be it humans or soybeans.

Then I would say the same about AI models.

Essentially, I think removing the profit motive -- the ability to claim IP -- is the solution here. At that point the only people working in the space will be those who wish to give the world a gift rather than those who see the world as a gift given wholely to them.

 

[Toni]

While I can understand why some might argue that the family isn't entitled to financial compensation, what I find troubling is the apparent lack of consideration shown to the deceased, whose contribution has significantly advanced the healthcare industry and generated substantial financial gains for many. At the very least, providing for the healthcare needs of the deceased's immediate family would have been nice.

But that would be black privilege so never mind.

I would like to say that in every single course I took that pertained to cell or molecular biology, Henrietta Lacks’ contribution to the advancement of our understanding of human cancer as well as other aspects of cell growth and development were acknowledged, respectfully and even reverentially. So at least some university students are so informed of her life, her death and her contribution.

Now consent to use cells taken in a biopsy or other data that might be collected in the course of medical treatment is standard. It certainly was not when Henrietta Lacks was being treated.

I don’t actually know how often, if ever, consent was required or even occasionally requested. Regardless, her status as a woman and a black person certainly made it much less likely that it would have ever occurred to anyone that she should be consulted about the possible use of her cells in research. Her cells first demonstrated that cancer cells are immortal—they do not undergo senescence or biological aging. Properly cultured, cancer cells can continue to grow indefinitely. Normal cells have a finite number of replications they can undergo before dying. This has had profound implications for many, many medical advancements. It is difficult to overstate just how pivotal the knowledge gained from her cells has been and continues to be.

We ALL owe her a tremendous debt for the lifesaving knowledge that was gained from her contribution, however unwitting or unwillingly obtained. Doubtless some of us posting on this forum are alive thanks to her. I am grateful.

Here is a link to a John’s Hopkins article:

The Importance of HeLa Cells

www.hopkinsmedicine.org

 

[Politesse]

While I can understand why some might argue that the family isn't entitled to financial compensation, what I find troubling is the apparent lack of consideration shown to the deceased, whose contribution has significantly advanced the healthcare industry and generated substantial financial gains for many. At the very least, providing for the healthcare needs of the deceased's immediate family would have been nice.

But that would be black privilege so never mind.

Having a right to your own body is Black Privilege, apparently? I get tired of this country sometimes.

You'd think an interesting case like this would spur the public to some sort of curiosity about the legal situation of your cell lines and where it currently stands and has stood, but no, we just gotta fight about race some more and ignore any facts that try to intrude on the conversation.

 

[scombrid]

I had already read this story elsewhere so I only clicked this thread to see how long it took to get the expected reply from the expected person(s). Faster than I bet myself. I owe me a coffee.

 

[Shadowy Man]

While I can understand why some might argue that the family isn't entitled to financial compensation, what I find troubling is the apparent lack of consideration shown to the deceased, whose contribution has significantly advanced the healthcare industry and generated substantial financial gains for many. At the very least, providing for the healthcare needs of the deceased's immediate family would have been nice.

But that would be black privilege so never mind.

Having a right to your own body is Black Privilege, apparently? I get tired of this country sometimes.

the black privilege referred to by Derec is The implication that they only received a payout because they were black. A white family would not have received compensation for the same scenario. though there hasn’t been presented that scenario so we can’t know for sure. If this was common practice, as implied, then others should come forward and sue

 

[Politesse]

the black privilege referred to by Derec is The implication that they only received a payout because they were black. A white family would not have received compensation for the same scenario.

That doesn't even make sense. This was settled with the company, not ordered by a judge, and if you think those kinds of promise-and-a-handshake settlements generally favor poor black families over well to do whites (or the major American tech companies they might want to sue)... I dunno man, we live in different countries. That is certainly not true in the United States, that backroom deals with major corporations usually favor Blacks or poor folks. The very idea is absurd.

As for the situation the Lacks family found themselves in, it has not in fact a been common practice to steal cells and make considerable profit from them in a way that is later found out and litigated, and as Lacks was in an extremely unusual health situation as well there have been very few strictly equivalent cases, though there have been some and they are worth reading about, especially for people who are in fact from the US and might be affected by this case law. I refuse to spend my time summarizing in a forum essay that will be glibly ignored on a topic which is very easily researched. Neither the Henrietta Lacks case nor those that preceded it - John Moore, Jonathan Greenburg, the Myriad decision, and several others - are obscure situations, there are avalanches of books, websites, podcasts, and whatever else you fancy on the subject. And I have yet to see any evidence that anyone in this thread has spent more time researching the issue than it took to read the headline.

 

[Shadowy Man]

the black privilege referred to by Derec is The implication that they only received a payout because they were black. A white family would not have received compensation for the same scenario.

That doesn't even make sense. This was settled with the company, not ordered by a judge, and if you think those kinds of promise-and-a-handshake settlements generally favor poor black families over well to do whites (or the major American tech companies they might want to sue)... I dunno man, we live in different countries. That is certainly not true in the United States, that backroom deals with major corporations usually favor Blacks or poor folks. The very idea is absurd.

As for the situation the Lacks family found themselves in, it has not in fact a been common practice to steal cells and make considerable profit from them in a way that is later found out and litigated, and as Lacks was in an extremely unusual health situation as well there have been very few strictly equivalent cases, though there have been some and they are worth reading about, especially for people who are in fact from the US and might be affected by this case law. I refuse to spend my time summarizing in a forum essay that will be glibly ignored on a topic which is very easily researched. Neither the Henrietta Lacks case nor those that preceded it - John Moore, Jonathan Greenburg, the Myriad decision, and several others - are obscure situations, there are avalanches of books, websites, podcasts, and whatever else you fancy on the subject. And I have yet to see any evidence that anyone in this thread has spent more time researching the issue than it took to read the headline.

The above was Derec’s position, not mine. Unless I’ve interpreted it incorrectly. He’s free to correct me and state his position clearly.

 

[Gospel]

And I have yet to see any evidence that anyone in this thread has spent more time researching the issue than it took to read the headline.

Those cases did not take place before Lacks' death. During that time, it was commonplace for cells to be taken from individuals without consent. This likely impacted countless patients. While having knowledge of subsequent cases doesn't hurt it also doesn't help in Lack's case. I mean, it can help people better understand laws around the ownership of human tissue and the on going debates around it. It also might help people not call Lack's family greedy or privileged but anyone who would do that can't be helped anyway.

My contention lies in the fact that, at the time of the incident, they understood the significance of these cells yet showed complete disregard for the immediate family of the deceased. Though not obligated, they had within their power the means to ensure that the family's healthcare needs were met, but did nothing.

Had they acted with some empathy, this particular discussion might not have been necessary.

The company's decision to settle out of court indicates to me that they might indeed acknowledge the value they've derived from Lack's cells, and as a result had no qualms in compensating the family. Which seems reasonable to me.

I would like to say that in every single course I took that pertained to cell or molecular biology, Henrietta Lacks’ contribution to the advancement of our understanding of human cancer as well as other aspects of cell growth and development were acknowledged, respectfully and even reverentially. So at least some university students are so informed of her life, her death and her contribution.

Yes, it is important to recognize the invaluable contributions made by individuals like Henrietta Lacks, even when their cells were procured without their consent. Equally important is to remember that these individuals, were denied the debate on whether people had the basic right to consent to the use of their own cells. I firmly believe that if the concerned parties had been informed at the time, legal actions and court decisions would have occurred much earlier.