The story of Henrietta Lacks is one that lays bare the variety of ways that Black people have been historically deceived, taken advantage of, played, finessed, and scammed by these United States of America. In 1951, Lacks went to the hospital, Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, desperately seeking care for cervical cancer. During that appointment, Lacks’ cervical cells, known as “HeLa cells,” were harvested without her consent and used for decades of research due to her immortalized human cell line. HeLa cells have been integral in the engineering of vaccines for COVID, and treatments for Parkinson’s, cancer, influenza, and many others.
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Recently, Lacks’ surviving family members have been fighting in court seeking justice for the immeasurable wrong that was done to their ancestor. According to Yahoo! News, the family has reached their second settlement with Big Pharma holding them accountable for their misdeeds and devious practices with the help of ubiquitous civil rights attorney Ben Crump. This particular suit was filed against a Swiss-based company, Novartis, that owns a reported hundreds of patents based on Lacks’ HeLa cells.
“Novartis was aware that these cells were taken without consent,” the lawsuit said. “Despite this, Novartis never sought or received permission from the estate of Henrietta Lacks to use her cells, treating them as mere tools or resources.”
The details of the settlement remain private but both parties released a joint statement acknowledging that all terms have been satisfied.
“Members of the family of Henrietta Lacks and Novartis are pleased they were able to find a way to resolve this matter filed by Henrietta Lacks’s estate outside of court,” the statement noted.
Of course, no civil rights lawsuit settlement would be complete without attorney Crump putting a period on it.
“For the family and her grandchildren, this is certainly justice because people said they would never realize any benefit or compensation from her immortal HeLa cells, even though these pharmaceutical companies were profiting billions and billions of dollars,” Crump added in a separate interview, revealing the family’s satisfaction with the settlement.
There are undoubtedly more battles to win, but setting these legal precedents bodes well for the future of the Lacks’ family’s fight for justice. Ws in the chat!
