Immortality is still a chimera. Henrietta Lacks, however, comes pretty close to this impossible dream of humanity.
Her cells are alive and are a key aid for important scientific achievements, as well as a profit for a pharmaceutical company, which is known to have collected billions without the knowledge of this woman’s family.
The company Thermo Fisher Scientific reached an agreement this week with the descendants of Lacks, who will receive financial restitution, without specifying the figure, for the use of the cells known as HeLa.
The deal was announced on the day that this African-American woman, turned guinea pig, would have turned 103.
“Henrietta Lacks was not an inferior being, in fact she was extraordinary”, remarked the lawyer Ben Crumb, who raised the litigation. “His cells were stolen from his body. He made an incredible contribution that has changed medicine for 70 years and improved people’s quality of life,” he insisted.
“The suffering of many black citizens has fueled medical progress and benefits without compensation or recognition,” says the family’s lawsuit, which states that the pharmaceutical company uses this tissue in a dozen products. The HeLa have been used in the creation of vaccines (covid, polio), the treatment of cancer or AIDS.
Her story led to the bestselling book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot and a 2017 film starring Oprah Winfrey.
Lacks, a resident of Baltimore, was 31 years old, and had five children, when in 1951, at John Hopkins, a segregated hospital, she was diagnosed with cervical cancer.
Dr. George Gray collected a tissue sample from a tumor without authorization. Unlike other cells Gray had worked with, Lacks’ cells continued to divide and had the ability to reproduce outside the human body, opening up extraordinary research possibilities. Hopkins shared HeLa with other specialists.
Lacks died shortly after being diagnosed. Her children suffered her absence, the lack of her care, totally unaware of their mother’s legacy.
They discovered the exploitation of the cells when family members began receiving strange calls from scientific researchers in the 1970s asking for blood samples. His medical records were released without consent.
One night, at a dinner party, a guest asked them if they had any connection with the origin of HeLa. They learned that their mother’s cells were still alive around the world.
