The family of Henrietta Lacks on Tuesday announced that it had settled a lawsuit against Thermo Fisher Scientific, a biotechnology company that commercialized the immortal cell line of Lacks, a housewife and tobacco farmer who died in 1951. The announcement was made on what would have been her 103rd birthday.
Decades after her death, Lacks continues to make incredible contributions to medical science. The problem is that these contributions weren't achieved with her consent. In 1951, doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital extracted Lacks' cervical cells as part of an attempt to treat her cancer. Dr. George Gey, a physician at the hospital, noticed that Lacks' cells reproduce at a very high rate, and began cultivating them for use in a broad range of medical research.
