The family of Henrietta Lacks, whose stolen cancer cells changed medicine, settles lawsuit

The family of Henrietta Lacks, whose cells, known as HeLa cells, were stolen and harvested without her consent in the 1950s, has reached a settlement with Thermo Fisher Scientific, a biotech company.

The announcement was made Tuesday, on what would have been Lacks’s 103rd birthday. The original lawsuit was filed in 2021, and the family decided not to disclose the details of the agreement.

“The parties are pleased that they were able to find a way to resolve this matter outside of Court and will have no further comment about the settlement,” attorneys Ben Crump and Chris Seeger said in a press statement. “Henrietta Lacks' family would also like to thank the U.S. Congressman Kweisi Mfume, Chris Van Hollen, and Ben Cardin for introducing the legislation to honor her with the Congressional Gold Medal in recognition of her contributions to medicine and the world.”

On June 14, members of the Congressional Black Caucus and advocates gathered to nominate Lacks for the Congressional Gold Medal, one of the highest awards that a citizen can receive from Congress. It has been awarded to fewer than 200 people nationwide.

“What we’re attempting to do [on June 14] is make sure her passing is not forgotten, it's not buried, but rather held high for the nation to be able to look at and see her as a daughter of America,” said Rep. Kweisi Mfume, D-Md., at a press conference at the Capitol.

Lacks’s cells were the first human cells to multiply outside of the body, and her unknowing contribution to medicine played a vital role in the polio vaccine, cloning, in vitro fertilization, gene mapping and much more.

“I’m not surprised at all that it was a strong Black woman who would be able to have cells strong enough that it would generate outside the human body,” Crump said at the presser in June.

Who was Henrietta Lacks?

Lacks, a mother of five, was diagnosed with cervical cancer in 1951 after a visit to the Johns Hopkins Hospital, one of the few hospitals that treated poor Black people during the 1950s.

“They did not treat her for cervical cancer. They butchered her, they put radiation rods inside of her and they stole her cells,” Crump said.

During Lacks's visit, a sample of her cancer cells was stolen and sent to a research lab, where doctors discovered that her cells were unique.

“They are superaggressive cells,” Gail Jarvik, professor of medical genetics at the University of Washington, told Yahoo News, adding that they were historic because they were “the first cells to be ‘culturable’ — in other words, to be kept alive.”

A year after her cells were taken, Lacks died from cervical cancer at the age of 31. But over the past seven decades, her cells have continued to multiply and impact health care. “The same aggressiveness with which the cancer killed Henrietta Lacks made these cells easier to grow in a culture situation,” Jarvik said.

Every 24 hours Lacks’s cells regenerate, according to Crump, and they have contributed to research for drugs used to treat cancer, HIV, hemophilia, leukemia and Parkinson’s disease.

“Henrietta Lacks’s life, death, body, cells and story has affected just about every person on the planet since the 1950s. If you have ever taken medication or had a vaccination, a treatment for cancer, IVF, HIV — just about anything, really — it has been tested on Henrietta’s cells,” Mojisola Adebayo, who wrote “Family Tree,” a play honoring Lacks, told BBC News.

‘Not the right sort of inclusion’

Experts say Lacks’s treatment had a direct impact on the trust of underprivileged groups in the medical system. “This is hugely problematic, because in order to do the best science, and do science that benefits everybody, we need everybody engaged in medical research,” Jarvik said.

In 2019, Congress passed the Henrietta Lacks Enhancing Cancer Research Act, which requires government agencies to review and address participation in federally funded cancer clinical trials for minorities.

The law requires clinical trials to expand, “in such a way that we don't have another instance where we lose a life like Mrs. Lacks because there was not the right sort of inclusion,” Mfume said.

‘Acknowledgment and affirmation’

Lacks’s family believes honoring her life and contribution is “a step in the right direction for justice and humanity,” her grandson Alfred Carter Jr. said on June 14.

“No one knew where those HeLa cells came from. No one knew that she was a mother. She was a wife. She had cousins and friends and family that loved her and cared about her,” granddaughter Kim Lacks aid.

Mfume said he is urging his colleagues in the House and Senate to move forward on approving the Congressional Gold Medal for Lacks.

“There are a lot of people in this country, and indeed around the world, that are walking today, benefiting from the research and from the further development of those cells,” he said.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, said in June that she believes the process will move swiftly. “I believe that there'll be no member of Congress that will not vote — Democrat or Republican — to provide this family with acknowledgment and affirmation [from] their nation,” she said.