2023-08-01 19:59:00
The family of Henrietta Lacks, the African-American woman with “immortal cells” that revolutionized modern medicine 70 years ago, reached an agreement with Thermo Fisher, the biotechnology company that used the woman’s genetic material without her consent, lawyers announced today.
“The parties are satisfied that they have found a way to resolve this matter out of court,” said lawyers for the Lacks family, Ben Crump and Chris Seeger, in a statement released today, according to the news agency. AFP.
However, Terms of the settlement, which was reached nearly two years after a complaint was filed, were not disclosed. in the US state of Maryland.
Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc he also confirmed the agreement in the same words as the family lawyers.
In 1951 Henrietta Lacks, age 31, died of cervical cancer at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimorebut during attempts to cure her, cells were removed from her tumor and sent to a researcher without her knowledge.
The researcher quickly realized that his cells, renamed HeLa cells, they were extraordinary because they could be grown in vitro, that is, outside the human body, and multiply to infinitybecoming “the first immortal human cells” to be grown in a laboratory.
This allowed pharmaceutical companies from all over the world to develop vaccines, especially against polio, cancer treatments and some cloning techniques.
Henrietta Lacks’s family didn’t find out until the 1970s and did not understand the scope, until Rebecca Skloot published in 2010 the bestseller “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” (The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks).
“They have been using their cells for 70 years and the Lacks family received nothing in exchange for this theft,” his granddaughter Kimberly Lacks denounced in 2021, when the family said they intended to file a complaint and accused Thermo Fisher Scientific of profiting from the commercialization of cells.
Henrietta Lacks would have turned 103 today. The biotech company did not respond to AFP inquiries on the matter.
With information from Telam.
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