The Estate of Henrietta Lacks Sues Biotech Company for Selling 'Stolen' Cells Everyday Health MenuNewslettersSearch Public Health News The Estate of Henrietta Lacks Sues Biotech Company For Selling ' Stolen' CellsLawsuit alleges Thermo Fisher Scientific has reaped 'staggering profits' by using the HeLa cell line. By Becky UphamOctober 8, 2021Everyday Health ArchiveA book about Lacks’s life and her incredible cells, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot, was published to popular and critical acclaim in 2010.Lacks Family via The Henrietta Lacks Foundation/AP PhotoA lawsuit filed by the estate of Henrietta Lacks alleges that the biotech company Thermo Fisher Scientific made a conscious choice to sell and mass produce the living tissue of Henrietta Lacks, despite knowing that Lacks’s tissue had been taken without her consent by doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital. The cells, nicknamed “HeLa” cells, are one of the most utilized tools in research, and vital in developing the polio vaccine, cloning, gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, and more. The lawsuit is seeking the full amount of the net profits that Thermo Fisher has earned from selling the HeLa cells and is asking that the company to stop using the cells without the estate’s permission, according to a report published October 4 in The Baltimore Sun. Hela cells and cells with modifications can sell for between $400 and thousands of dollars per vial. Thermo Fisher Scientific estimates its annual revenue at approximately 35 billion dollars a year. The Story of Henrietta Lacks Henrietta Lacks was a poor, black tobacco farmer and mother of five in 1951 when she showed up at The Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore with vaginal bleeding, according to hospital records. She was diagnosed with cervical cancer and received treatment but died later that year at the age of 31. A sample of her cells that were retrieved (which the hospital states was a common practice at that time) and sent to a tissue lab. Unlike the other cells samples that quickly died in the lab, Lacks’s cells doubled every 20 to 24 hours, which made them incredibly valuable to researchers. A book about Lacks’s life and her incredible cells, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot, was published to popular and critical acclaim in 2010, and later made into a movie starring Oprah Winfrey. Suit Alleges That Thermo Fisher Is ' Embracing a Legacy of Racial Injustice' By continuing to profit from the HeLa cells in spite of knowing the cell lines’ origin, Thermo Fisher Scientific is choosing to “embrace a legacy of racial injustice embedded in the U.S. research and medical systems,” said attorney Ben Crump, a civil rights and personal injury lawyer and part of a team representing the Estate of Henrietta Lacks, in a statement released earlier this week. “Black people have the right to control their bodies. And yet Thermo Fisher Scientific treats Henrietta Lacks’s living cells as chattel to be bought and sold,” said Crump. “Race is key because Henrietta Lacks, as a person of color in a racist society, had less means — as her family did immediately after she passed away — to prevent agents of powerful institutions to appropriate her cells without her consent,” says Andrew Flescher, PhD, a humanities and biomedical ethicist at Stony Brook University in New York. “Her family would likely not have been in a position of having to address the taking of her cells without permission in retrospect, long after the fact,” he says. The United States has a long history of violating the bodily integrity of individuals who come from communities of color — for example the Tuskegee study — so viewed in that context this is yet another instance of members of an underserved or disadvantaged community being further exploited, says Dr. Flescher. The Tuskegee study is one of the most terrible events in American health research. The study, initiated in 1932, was a 40-year experiment conducted by Public Health Service officials that followed 600 rural black men in Alabama who had syphilis. The men were never told their diagnosis and were denied treatment for the disease (treatment was available at that time). The unethical study was ended when whistleblowers revealed what the researchers were doing. Many men in the study died from complications due to syphilis, and many of the wives and children of the men contracted the disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). “Rebecca Skloot makes a convincing case in her book that Henrietta Lacks was an outsider in her healthcare system, doing her very best without resources and support,” says Flescher. “We are all at the mercy of our healthcare providers when we are sick; this is all the more the case when we have no ‘ins’ to advocate for us,” he adds. Federal Law Now Prohibits Using a Person s Cells Without Their Consent What happened to Henrietta Lacks is no longer legal. If researchers want to use a person’s tissues or blood for research, federal law requires informed consent. On the Johns Hopkins Medicine website, a page dedicated to the legacy of Henrietta Lacks states that in the 1950’s when the cells were taken, “there were no established practices for informing or obtaining consent from patients when retrieving cell or tissue samples for research purposes, nor were there any regulations on the use of patient’s cells in research.” The university states that it was common practice for extra samples to be collected from cervical cancer patients during biopsies to be used for research purposes, regardless of race or socioeconomic status. Johns Hopkins has never sold or profited from the HeLa cells and does not own the rights to the HeLa cell line. 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