11-08-2023, 11:15 AM
BY LEA SKENE
Updated 6:54 AM GMT+8, August 11, 2023
BALTIMORE (AP) — Just over a week after Henrietta Lacks’ descendants settled a lawsuit against a biotech company they accused of unjustly profiting off her cells for generations, the family’s attorneys have filed another claim against a different corporation.
The new lawsuit, which targets California-based biopharmaceutical company Ultragenyx
......
the family have said they plan to bring a series of lawsuits against various entities that continue to reap rewards from the racist medical system that took advantage of Lacks.
A Black mother of five from southern Virginia, Lacks and her family were living outside Baltimore when she was diagnosed with cervical cancer in 1951. Doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital saved a sample of her cancer cells collected during a biopsy — without her knowledge or consent.
She died at age 31 in the hospital’s “colored ward,” but her genetic material lived on, the first human cells to continuously grow and reproduce in lab dishes. HeLa cells have since become a cornerstone of modern medicine, enabling countless scientific and medical innovations, including the development of the polio vaccine, genetic mapping and even COVID-19 shots.
......
At the time doctors harvested cells from Lacks’ cervical tumor, it was not illegal to do so without a patient’s permission. But lawyers for her family accuse Ultragenyx of continuing to commercialize the results long after the origins of the HeLa cell line became well known — an “unjust enrichment” claim that largely mirrors the recently settled lawsuit against Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., which was filed in 2021.
......
Her cells have had a massive impact on modern medicine because unlike most, they survived and thrived in laboratories, allowing researchers anywhere to reproduce studies using identical genetic material.
The remarkable science involved — and the impact on the Lacks family, some of whom had chronic illnesses and no health insurance — were documented in a bestselling book by Rebecca Skloot, “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,”
https://apnews.com/article/henrietta-lac...efcf614721
Updated 6:54 AM GMT+8, August 11, 2023
BALTIMORE (AP) — Just over a week after Henrietta Lacks’ descendants settled a lawsuit against a biotech company they accused of unjustly profiting off her cells for generations, the family’s attorneys have filed another claim against a different corporation.
The new lawsuit, which targets California-based biopharmaceutical company Ultragenyx
......
the family have said they plan to bring a series of lawsuits against various entities that continue to reap rewards from the racist medical system that took advantage of Lacks.
A Black mother of five from southern Virginia, Lacks and her family were living outside Baltimore when she was diagnosed with cervical cancer in 1951. Doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital saved a sample of her cancer cells collected during a biopsy — without her knowledge or consent.
She died at age 31 in the hospital’s “colored ward,” but her genetic material lived on, the first human cells to continuously grow and reproduce in lab dishes. HeLa cells have since become a cornerstone of modern medicine, enabling countless scientific and medical innovations, including the development of the polio vaccine, genetic mapping and even COVID-19 shots.
......
At the time doctors harvested cells from Lacks’ cervical tumor, it was not illegal to do so without a patient’s permission. But lawyers for her family accuse Ultragenyx of continuing to commercialize the results long after the origins of the HeLa cell line became well known — an “unjust enrichment” claim that largely mirrors the recently settled lawsuit against Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., which was filed in 2021.
......
Her cells have had a massive impact on modern medicine because unlike most, they survived and thrived in laboratories, allowing researchers anywhere to reproduce studies using identical genetic material.
The remarkable science involved — and the impact on the Lacks family, some of whom had chronic illnesses and no health insurance — were documented in a bestselling book by Rebecca Skloot, “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,”
https://apnews.com/article/henrietta-lac...efcf614721