‘Immortal’ suit to be considered

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’s 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.

The cells are considered the first “immortal” cell line, meaning they continue to reproduce in the laboratory instead of dying.

Lacks’s family is suing Thermo Fisher on the grounds of “unjust enrichment” for continuing to make and sell products derived from HeLa cells. Although it’s not the only company using the cells, Thermo Fisher Scientific is one of the largest biotech companies in the world, with a market cap of $215 billion (U.S.).

Thermo Fisher attorney Andrew George said what happened to Lacks was morally reprehensible, but he asked the judge to dismiss the case on the grounds that the Lacks family had failed to file a claim in a timely manner. In Maryland, a person has to bring an unjust enrichment claim within three years of first learning about something that might be grounds for a lawsuit.

George pointed out that in 2010, Rebecca Skloot published the bestselling book “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” which was later made into an HBO movie and detailed Lacks’s story so well it became one of the best-known examples of American racist medical mistreatment and experimentation.

In 2018, members of the Lacks family went on a media tour to announce they would be filing several lawsuits, George said, which suggests they family missed the three-year window.

Attorneys Ben Crump and Christopher Seeger argued in court that the lawsuit should be allowed to continue because of the continual harm being done against the Lacks family, comparing it to German families who held onto money taken from Holocaust victims.