Henrietta Lacks' estate sues company over use of her cancer cells

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The estate of Henrietta Lacks sued a biotechnology company on Monday, accusing it of selling cells that doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital took from the Black woman in 1951 without her knowledge or consent as part of 'a racially unjust medical system.'

COLLEGE PARK, MD. -- The estate of Henrietta Lacks sued a biotechnology company on Monday, accusing it of selling cells that doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital took from the Black woman in 1951 without her knowledge or consent as part of "a racially unjust medical system."

"It is outrageous that this company would think that they have intellectual rights property to their grandmother's cells. Why is it they have intellectual rights to her cells and can benefit billions of dollars when her family, her flesh and blood, her Black children, get nothing?" one of the family's attorneys, Ben Crump, said Monday at a news conference outside the federal courthouse in Baltimore.

On its website, the company says it generates approximately $35 billion in annual revenue. A company spokesman reached by telephone didn't immediately comment on the lawsuit. "The exploitation of Henrietta Lacks represents the unfortunately common struggle experienced by Black people throughout history," the suit says. "Indeed, Black suffering has fueled innumerable medical progress and profit, without just compensation or recognition. Various studies, both documented and undocumented, have thrived off the dehumanization of Black people."

Parthasarathy said the case also comes amid revelations about how tech companies are profiting from mining customers' data. Johns Hopkins Medicine says it reviewed its interactions with Lacks and her family over more than 50 years after the 2010 publication Rebecca Skloot's book. It says it "has never sold or profited from the discovery or distribution of HeLa cells and does not own the rights to the HeLa cell line," but it has acknowledged an ethical responsibility.

 

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