THE FAMILY of an African American woman whose cervical cells were taken without consent 70  years ago has launched lawsuit against a biotech firm it says earned huge profits from them, just weeks after reaching a settlement with another company.

Henrietta Lacks was a young mother of five from Baltimore who died in 1951 after being diagnosed with cervical cancer.

During surgery, a sample of her cells was taken from the tumour and sent to a laboratory where they were found to be the first living human cells ever to survive and multiply outside the human body.  

Doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital’s ‘colored ward’  saved a sample of her cancer cells collected during a biopsy — without her knowledge or consent. At the time doctors harvested cells from Lacks’ cervical tumor, it was not illegal to do so without a patient’s permission.

The cells taken from Lacks are known as HeLa cells and have been credited with transforming modern medicine. They have been used in scientific and medical innovations including the development of the polio vaccine, gene mapping, IVF, and cloning.

But lawyers for her family accuse biotech company Ultragenyx of continuing to commercialize the results long after the origins of the HeLa cell line became well-known.

Renowned civil rights attorney Ben Crump and co-counsel Christopher Seeger who are representing the family in the lawsuit said in in a statement that Ultragenyx Pharmaceutical made a conscious choice to sell and mass-produce the living tissue of Henrietta Lacks, despite the corporation’s knowledge that Lacks’ tissue had been taken from her without her consent by doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital.

Their actions stand as a grim reminder of America’s history of medical racism and the urgent need to rectify these past wrongs

Christopher Seeger, lawyer for the Lacks family

The lawyers claimed that the retrieval of Lacks’ tissue “is considered part of a conspiracy to harvest tissue for research from Black women without their knowledge or consent in racially segregated wards throughout the 1950s.

“The procedure rendered Lacks infertile but did nothing to stop the spread of her cervical cancer, which claimed her life in 1951”.

Crump said in the statement: “Ultragenyx’s choice to continue utilizing HeLa cells despite the cell line’s origin and the concrete harm it inflicts on the Lacks family can only be understood as a choice to embrace a legacy of racial injustice embedded in the U.S. research and medical systems.

“Like anyone else, Black people have the right to control their bodies. Just as Ultragenyx takes advantage of Henrietta Lacks’ immortal cell line, they also take advantage of vulnerable individuals with rare illnesses by price gouging them for essential treatments.”

Seeger added: “The enduring legacy of Henrietta Lacks should be one of acknowledgment, respect, and restitution, not continued exploitation by companies like Ultragenyx.  

“Their actions stand as a grim reminder of America’s history of medical racism and the urgent need to rectify these past wrongs.

“Our lawsuit aims to help the Lacks family reclaim their ancestor’s story and receive the justice and compensation they deserve.” 

The lawsuit comes just weeks after Lacks’ family settled a lawsuit against another biotech company they accused of unjustly profiting off her cells for generations.

The family had agreed a confidential deal with Massachusetts-based firm Thermo Fisher Scientific.

Crump, who has represented the family of George Floyd and other Black victims of US police violence, said in a statement that the settlement provided “some measure of justice for Henrietta Lacks, 70 years later.”