TBA Law Blog


Posted by: Kate Prince on Oct 5, 2021

The estate of Henrietta Lacks is suing Massachusetts-based biotechnology company Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. for allegedly selling cells taken from the Black woman in 1951 without her knowledge, NPR reports. Before Lacks died of cervical cancer, tissue was taken from her tumor and became the first human cells to be successfully cloned. HeLa cells, as they’re now known, have enabled countless medical innovations, including the development of the polio vaccine, genetic mapping and even COVID-19 vaccines. Lawyers for the Lacks family say Thermo Fisher has continued to commercialize the results long after the origins of the HeLa cell line became known. The estate is represented by well-known civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who called it “outrageous” that the company “would think that they have intellectual rights property” to Lacks’ cells.