Henrietta Lacks' family sues biotech company over cells, says it "chose to use her body for profit"

The estate of Henrietta Lacks sued a biotechnology company on Monday, accusing it of selling cells that doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital took from the Black woman in 1951 without her knowledge or consent as part of "a racially unjust medical system."

The estate's federal lawsuit says Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., of Waltham, Massachusetts, knowingly mass produced and sold tissue that was taken from Lacks by doctors at the hospital.

The HeLa cells taken from the woman's tumor before she died of cervical cancer became the first human cells to be successfully cloned and have been reproduced infinitely ever since. They have used in countless scientific and medical innovations including the development of the polio vaccine and gene mapping.

Lacks' cells were harvested and developed  long before the advent of consent procedures  used in medicine and scientific research today, but lawyers for the family say the company has continued to commercialize the results well after the origins of the HeLa cell line became well known.

"Thermo Fisher Scientific has known that HeLa cells were stolen from Ms. Lacks and chose to use her body for profit anyway," the lawsuit says.

Among the lawyers for the family's estate is Ben Crump, a Florida-based civil rights attorney. Crump rose to national prominence in recent years for representing the families of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd -- Black people whose deaths at the hands of police and vigilantes helped revitalize a national movement toward police reform and racial justice.

"We want to make sure that the family voice is finally heard after 70 years of being ignored," Crump told CBSN on Monday. "The American pharmaceutical corporations have a shameful history of profiting off the research of using and exploiting Black people and their illnesses and their bodies."

The lawsuit asks the court in Baltimore to order Thermo Fisher Scientific to "disgorge the full amount of its net profits obtained by commercializing the HeLa cell line to the Estate of Henrietta Lacks." It also seeks an order permanently enjoining Thermo Fisher Scientific from using the HeLa cell line without the estate's permission.

On its website, the company says it generates approximately $35 billion in annual revenue. A company spokesman reached didn't immediately comment on the lawsuit.

HeLa cells were discovered to have unique properties. While most cell samples died shortly after being removed from the body, her cells survived and thrived in laboratories. This exceptional quality made it possible to cultivate her cells indefinitely - they became known as the first immortalized human cell line - making it possible for scientists anywhere to reproduce studies using identical cells.

The remarkable science involved - and the impact on the Lacks family, some of whom suffered from chronic illnesses without health insurance - have been documented in a bestselling book, "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks." Oprah Winfrey portrayed her daughter in an HBO movie about the story. The lawsuit was filed exactly 70 years after the day she died, on Oct. 4, 1951.

A group of white doctors at Johns Hopkins in the 1950s preyed on Black women with cervical cancer, cutting away tissue samples from their patients' cervixes without their patients' knowledge or consent, the lawsuit says.

"The exploitation of Henrietta Lacks represents the unfortunately common struggle experienced by Black people throughout history," the suit says. "Indeed, Black suffering has fueled innumerable medical progress and profit, without just compensation or recognition. Various studies, both documented and undocumented, have thrived off the dehumanization of Black people."

 Johns Hopkins Medicine says  it reviewed its interactions with Lacks and her family over more than 50 years after the 2010 publication Rebecca Skloot's book. It says it "has never sold or profited from the discovery or distribution of HeLa cells and does not own the rights to the HeLa cell line," but it has acknowledged an ethical responsibility.

"At several points across those decades, we found that Johns Hopkins could have - and should have - done more to inform and work with members of Henrietta Lacks' family out of respect for them, their privacy and their personal interests," Johns Hopkins Medicine says on its website.