Read this! Seriously, Read. This. Book.
Posted on 10/04/2021 6:39:31 PM PDT by algore
COLLEGE PARK, Md. -- The estate of Henrietta Lacks sued a biotechnology company on Monday, accusing it of selling cells that doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital took from the Black woman in 1951 without her knowledge or consent as part of “a racially unjust medical system."
Tissue taken from the woman's tumor before she died of cervical cancer became the first human cells to be successfully cloned. Reproduced infinitely ever since, HeLa cells have 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 vaccines.
Lacks’ cells were harvested and developed long before the advent of consent procedures used in medicine and scientific research today, but lawyers for her family say Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., of Waltham, Massachusetts, has continued to commercialize the results well after the origins of the HeLa cell line became well known.
“It is outrageous that this company would think that they have intellectual rights property to their grandmother’s cells. Why is it they have intellectual rights to her cells and can benefit billions of dollars when her family, her flesh and blood, her Black children, get nothing?” one of the family's attorneys, Ben Crump, said Monday at a news conference outside the federal courthouse in Baltimore.
Johns Hopkins said it never sold or profited from the cell lines, but many companies have patented ways of using them. Crump said these distributors have made billions from the genetic material “stolen” from Lacks' body.
Another family attorney, Christopher Seeger, hinted at related claims against other companies.
Thermo Fisher Scientific "shouldn’t feel too alone because they’re going to have a lot of company soon,” Seeger said.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
HeLa Cells = Hella Cells!
I don’t think there will be any payoff though.
I kind of like this. Pass the popcorn, please.
Only Big Pharma can patent/own your DNA.
Somebody is looking for a check. When I read “Ben Crump” I realized it was a big shakedown.
CC
The family will likely get their money and rightfully so.
I don’t like the “racial injustice” angle, but the cells were hers and I think her family deserves compensation.
I thought they had already done something like this.
At the time that all of this happened, I don’t believe there were any laws or regulations regarding the use of cells like these.
Law and Order had a great episode on this very thing.
In the show they got lots of money.
I wish this family well.
.
I doubt they’ll receive anything, if Law - and not ‘wokeness’ - is followed.
Ben Crump again. Not surprised.
OMG!! I was just going to post the same thing. Sounds like an episode of Law & Order.
Benjamin Crump (spit)
In this case, there should have been payouts to the immediate family; sons, daughters.
and this late?
TONS of payouts to sons, daughters.
and if they’re dead, grandsons and daughters.
but, only once.
The book about Henrietta Lacks is more fascinating than any television show:
Bunch of crap.
You’re an ignoramus.
Thanks for that. I had no idea.
Read this! Seriously, Read. This. Book.
Five minutes behind you! :)
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