A story more than half a century in the making has just come to an end. The family of Henrietta Lacks has reached an agreement with Thermo Fisher, the company that, following the death of this African-American woman diagnosed with highly aggressive cervical cancer, reproduced her cancer cells until they became immortal. The goal was to learn and research; and its use laid the foundation for a medical revolution. However, many, including her relatives, questioned the means by which this was achieved: perpetuating the strange tumor of an illiterate woman, a tobacco factory worker with few resources, who at no point gave her consent to repeat her illness over and over again, turning it into a sort of standard measure that is still used today. Finally, and after a bitter 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 settlement, reached almost two years after a complaint was filed in the US state of Maryland, have not been disclosed. It all began in 1951 when 31-year-old Henrietta Lacks arrived at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, where she was diagnosed with a highly aggressive form of cervical cancer, a condition her doctor claimed he had "never seen anything like it." During tests and attempts to cure her, cells from her tumor were extracted and sent for study by another research group. She never learned of this, as she died shortly thereafter, leaving behind eight orphaned children. Lacks's End, the Beginning of a New Era Although these malignant cells caused Lacks's death, they opened up a whole world of possibilities for medicine: scientists realized that her cancer cells could be grown in vitro, outside the human body, and multiplied infinitely. Thanks to these cells, renamed the HeLa cell line, all kinds of research have been possible, and vaccines have been developed, especially against polio, cancer treatments, and some cloning techniques. They have even traveled into space on the first space missions, so that scientists could anticipate what would happen to human flesh in zero gravity. While all this revolution was happening, the Lacks family knew nothing. At least for the first two decades. They were unaware that Henrietta's cells were the first to be bought, sold, packaged, and shipped to millions of laboratories around the world, some of them dedicated to experimenting with cosmetics to ensure their products didn't cause unwanted side effects. Everything changed with the 2010 publication of Rebecca Skloot's book "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks," a bestseller that reopened the debate about whether the ends justified the means, not to mention all the profits the pharmaceutical companies had made at its expense. MORE INFORMATION news No The historic Voyager 2 spacecraft 'beats' again after several days incommunicado beyond the Solar System news No The aphrodisiac used by the male moth is revealed: it is impregnated with a 'perfume' of plants "They have been using her cells for 70 years and the Lacks family has received nothing in return for this theft," denounced her granddaughter Kimberly Lacks in 2021, when the family said they intended to file a complaint and accused Thermo Fisher Scientific of making billions from the commercialization of the cells. This Tuesday, after decades in which the same cells that killed her have lived longer than Henrietta Lacks herself, she achieves her recognition. This Tuesday, on which, precisely, she would have turned 103.
