The family of Henrietta Lacks has reached a settlement with a science and technology company that it says used cells taken without Lacks’ consent in the 1950s to develop products it later sold for a profit.
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Lacks was being treated for cervical cancer at Johns Hopkins University in 1951 when doctors removed cells from her tumor without her knowledge or permission.
Those cells — now known as HeLa cells — had remarkable properties that allowed them to be endlessly reproduced, and they have since been used for a variety of scientific breakthroughs, including research about the human genome and the development of the polio and COVID-19 vaccines.
Why is the word “stolen” in quotation marks in the title?
