Thermo agrees settlement with Henrietta Lacks' family

The family of Henrietta Lacks, an African American woman whose cells have been used in research for decades but were allegedly harvested without her consent, has agreed to settle a lawsuit with lab equipment company Thermo Fisher Scientific.

The deal comes more than 70 years after doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital took a sample of cervical cells from Lacks, which became the first cells able to be grown continuously in the lab.

The HeLa cells have since become a key tool in human medical research – instrumental, for example, in the development of polio vaccines and cancer therapies. A lawsuit in 2021 filed by Lacks' descendants claimed, however, that Thermo had patented various uses of the cells and unjustly enriched itself through their use without the approval of or any payment to the family.

The suit further claimed the case is a clear example of the exploitation of minority patients by a "racially unjust medical system" that has other stains on its record, including the notorious Tuskegee Study, which denied treatment to hundreds of black men with syphilis in order to chart the natural course of the disease.

Lacks was aged 31, and a mother of five when she was diagnosed with cervical cancer in 1951. She died soon after in a segregated ward at Johns Hopkins, unaware that her cells had been taken for use in research.

It was not illegal to take patient samples without permission at the time, but the complaint alleged that Thermo continued to make money off HeLa cell-based products long after the origins became well known. Johns Hopkins itself says it did not profit from the use of the cells.

The undisclosed settlement followed closed-door negotiations between the two sides in Baltimore, with some of Lacks' grandchildren in attendance.

Thermo had argued that the case should be dismissed because it was filed after the expiry of the statute of limitations period. Legal counsel for the plaintiffs countered that the company was still profiting from the cells' use in around a dozen products, so that did not apply.

The lawsuit had sought to strip Thermo of profits from the commercialisation of HeLa cells and block the company from any further use without authorisation from Lacks' estate. One lawyer representing the family suggested that other companies working with HeLa cells may now be targeted, according to a Washington Post report.

Image by Doc. RNDr. Josef Reischig, CSc. via Wikimedia