BALTIMORE — A federal judge will decide whether the family of Henrietta Lacks has enough legal standing to continue its lawsuit against the biotech company Thermo Fisher Scientific after the two sides argued in court Tuesday about the use of cells taken from Lacks more than 70 years ago.
At question is whether Thermo Fisher — and other companies — ought to compensate Lacks’ living descendants for products derived from cervical cancer cells taken without her consent while she was receiving treatment at Johns Hopkins in 1951. Lacks, a Black woman from Baltimore County, died soon after the cells were taken due to complications from the cancer treatment she received.
Known as HeLa cells, they have been used since for a variety of scientific and medical breakthroughs and treatments. Researchers in the early 1950s used them to develop the polio vaccine, and they were instrumental in mapping the human genome.
