2023-08-01 18:18:15
A history of more than half a century has just come to an end. The family of Henrietta Lacks has signed an agreement with Thermo Fisher, the company that, following the death of this African-American woman diagnosed with very aggressive cervical cancer, reproduced her cancer cells until they became immortal. The purpose was to learn and investigate; and its use laid the foundations of an entire medical revolution. However, many, including her relatives, questioned the means to achieve it: perpetuating the strange tumor of an illiterate woman, a worker in a tobacco plant and with few resources, who at no time gave her consent to repeat her evil over and over once more. , making it a kind of standard measure that is still used today.
Finally, and following acrimonious debate and years of litigation, “the parties are pleased to have found a way to resolve this matter out of court,” Lacks family attorneys Ben Crump and Chris Seeger said in a statement. The terms of the agreement, which has been reached almost two years following a complaint was filed in the US state of Maryland, have not been disclosed.
The end of Lacks, the beginning of a new era
It all started when in 1951, 31-year-old Henrietta Lacks arrived at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, where she was diagnosed with a very aggressive cervical cancer that her doctor said “had never seen anything like it.” During tests and attempts to cure her, tumor cells were removed from her, which were sent to be studied by another research group. She never found out regarding all of this, as she died a short time later. She left eight children orphans.
Although these malignant cells caused Lacks’ death, they opened up a whole world of possibilities for medicine: scientists realized that his cancer cells might be grown in vitro, outside the human body, and multiply infinitely. Thanks to them, renamed the HeLa cell line, it has been possible to carry out all kinds of research and develop vaccines (special mention for polio, which has saved millions of lives), cancer treatments and some cloning techniques. . They even traveled into space on the first space missions so that scientists might anticipate what would happen to human flesh in zero gravity.
While all this revolution was going on, the Lacks family knew nothing. In the 1970s they found out they still existed, but they weren’t aware that Henrietta’s cells were bought, sold, packaged, and shipped to millions of laboratories around the world, some of them dedicated to experimenting with cosmetics to make sure their products did not cause unwanted side effects. Everything changed with the publication in 2010 of Rebecca Skloot’s book ‘The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks’, a bestseller that reopened the debate on whether the end justified the means. In addition to all the profit that the pharmaceutical companies had obtained at their expense.
“They have been using their cells for 70 years and the Lacks family has received nothing in return for this theft,” her granddaughter Kimberly Lacks said emphatically in 2021, when the family said they intended to file a complaint and accused Thermo Fisher Scientific of make billions from the commercialization of cells. This Tuesday, following decades in which the very cells that killed her have outlived Henrietta Lacks herself, she gets her compensation. This August 1 in which she, precisely, she would have turned 103 years old.
1690924764
#family #woman #cells #revolutionized #medicine #reaches #agreement #company #permission
