WHO Honors Henrietta Lacks as Family Pursues Justice

Oct. 14, 2021 -- Henrietta Lacks, the Black pistillate whose cells were infamously taken without her cognition for technological research, was honored this week by the World Heath Organization arsenic her household continues the combat to support her legacy.

Lacks’s cells, commonly known arsenic “HeLa,” are the lone known quality cells that proceed to enactment live and reproduce extracurricular of the quality body. When a idiosyncratic dies, their cells usually dice soon after. But her cells person been utilized for decades successful aesculapian discoveries and live-saving treatments.

“In honoring Henrietta Lacks, WHO acknowledges the value of reckoning with past technological injustices, and advancing radical equity in wellness and science,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, PhD, said astatine a ceremonial successful Geneva, Switzerland, connected Wednesday. “It’s besides an accidental to admit women -- peculiarly women of colour -- who person made unthinkable but often unseen contributions to aesculapian science.”

Lawrence Lacks, Henrietta Lacks’s 87-year-old son, accepted the grant connected her behalf.

Seeking Justice

The ceremonial came a small implicit a week aft Henrietta Lacks’s household took enactment to against the wide -- and unauthorized -- commercialized usage of HeLa cells, arsenic good arsenic to question “ownership” of the cells.

On Oct. 4, the Lacks household property filed a lawsuit against Thermo Fisher Scientific, a pharmaceutical company, for selling HeLa cells successful ample quantities astatine a precocious terms tag -- the institution earns adjacent to $35 billion successful gross each twelvemonth -- portion the Lacks household has ne'er benefited financially, according to the lawsuit.

In 1951, the twelvemonth doctors astatine Johns Hopkins Hospital chopped compartment insubstantial from Lacks’s cervix while she received attraction for cervical cancer, doctors did not request to inquire for support to instrumentality samples.

But the suit alleges that the multibillion-dollar institution has continued to make unthinkable amounts of income, adjacent aft knowing the origins of the HeLa cells.

The suit asks the tribunal to bid Thermo Fisher Scientific to "disgorge the afloat magnitude of its nett profits obtained by commercializing the HeLa compartment enactment to the Estate of Henrietta Lacks."

HeLa cells are valued anyplace betwixt $400 and thousands of dollars per vial, The Wall Street Journal reported.

HeLa cells let scientists to tally endless tests to amended recognize the quality assemblage and what it tin do, which person led scientists to recognize the effects of polio on the body, which helped make the polio vaccine.

HeLa cells were besides taken into abstraction to recognize the body’s absorption to zero gravity.

Restoring Trust -- Globally

For some, a Lacks household triumph successful tribunal crook a arguable page in American history, 1 that is filled with controversy.

“If you deliberation of the discourse of erstwhile her cells were taken 70 years ago, what was going connected successful America with each this ‘medical experimentation’ was tantamount with aesculapian racism,” civilian rights lawyer Ben Crump, who is portion of the ineligible squad representing the Lacks family, said astatine a caller quality conference.

One notable illustration mentioned by Crump is the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, which took spot betwixt 1932 and the mid-1970s.

Black men with syphilis were told they were receiving treatment, erstwhile they were really being studied to understand the aggressiveness of the disease. Even aft penicillin became the modular treatment for syphilis successful 1943, the experimentation continued, and many died arsenic a result.

The aftermath of the betrayal tin inactive beryllium felt contiguous amid COVID-19 and aboriginal vaccination efforts. Many Black radical were highly skeptical of getting a COVID-19 vaccine, with aesculapian distrust from past events playing a large role, studies show.

“This [lawsuit] is historic, not conscionable due to the fact that it would payment her family, but finally, America could travel to grips with trying to bash better, beryllium better, erstwhile it comes to aesculapian racism,” Crump said.

Other nations are addressing racist pasts, too, done Lacks’s story.

In England, a life-sized, bronze statue of Lacks was unveiled connected Oct. 4 astatine the University of Bristol.

It is the archetypal nationalist sculpture of a Black pistillate -- made by a Black pistillate -- successful the U.K., the BBC reported.

“Given her practice arsenic an African American woman, and Bristol’s nexus to the slave trade, this is an important connection for Bristol,” Helen Wilson-Roe, the creator who created the sculpture, said astatine the unveiling ceremony.

More than 2,000 voyages from Africa to the Americas, carrying much than fractional a cardinal slaves, were financed by Bristol merchants from 1698 to 1807, according to Bristol's Free Museums and Historic Houses.

More Than Medicine

A Lacks household triumph successful tribunal could correspond not lone justness successful the health attraction system, but besides Blacks being viewed arsenic adjacent players in society, Crump said.

“Often discussed successful the Black community, wherefore is it that Henry Ford’s household tin specify his bequest and payment from his legacy, the Dupont household tin specify his bequest and payment from his legacy, the Rockefeller legacy, the Kennedy bequest ...” helium said.

“But erstwhile it comes to Black people, others get to specify our bequest and others get to payment from our legacy?”

“We endeavor to marque definite that her [Lacks’s] household tin deduce payment for generations to come, for her children and children yet unborn.”