Law groups, professors lash out against Thermo Fisher in suit over the 'immortal cells' of Henrietta Lacks - Endpoints News
It’s been decades since medical researchers at Johns Hopkins unethically took tissue samples from Henrietta Lacks and used them to create the world’s first known “immortal” cell line.
Now, Thermo Fisher is looking to evade a lawsuit claiming it continues to profit from the cells without permission from Lacks’ estate. Lacks’ family says it “hasn’t seen a dime,” but new briefs filed by a suite of law groups and legal professors could help change that.
Three amici curiae, or “friend of the court,” briefs were filed on Tuesday against Thermo Fisher’s motion to dismiss all claims against itself.
“The unethical origins of HeLa cells are well known by TFS, yet it continues to commercialize them today,” states one brief filed by the Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the National Health Law Program and the National Women’s Law Center.
“TFS’ enrichment from HeLa cells is unjust because it originated from wrongful conduct that not only breached duties owed to Mrs. Lacks by her doctors, but was enabled by the historic, systemic disregard of legal principles regarding medical experimentation as to Black, low-income, and other systematically oppressed groups,” the brief continues.
Lacks, a Black tobacco farmer, was admitted to a racially segregated ward at Johns Hopkins Hospital as a cervical cancer patient back in 1951. While she was under anesthesia — and without her informed consent — her tissue was harvested and cultivated into a cell line that could produce indefinitely in lab conditions, a complaint alleges. While most cell samples die shortly after being removed from the body, Lacks’ were able to survive and reproduce.
She died of cervical cancer in October 1951, and for decades after, the origins of her cell line were unknown to those outside Johns Hopkins, according to the complaint. The cells (known as HeLa cells) have been used in some of the biggest scientific breakthroughs of the last 50-plus years, including the polio vaccine and in vitro fertilization.
The case has since played out in the public eye, becoming the subject of the bestselling book “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” in 2010 and a movie starring Oprah Winfrey in 2017.
Lacks’ estate filed a complaint back in 2021 seeking, among other stipulations, profits from the commercialization of the cell line, and an order barring the company from using the cells without permission.
“The defendant selfishly cites the public good to justify its profiteering from the assault of Henrietta Lacks. But the family does not seek to frustrate the use of the cells to benefit personkind. Instead, the family only asks to share in the profit derived from what was stolen from the family,” Southern University Law Center professor Deleso Alford wrote in a brief.
Thermo filed a motion back in December to dismiss all claims “for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted.”
But as Washington and Lee University professor Doug Rendleman and George Washington University professor Caprice Roberts argued in their brief against Thermo Fisher, “The lack of identical precedent should not block the ability of restitution law to provide disgorgement relief for the type of wrongdoing alleged.”
Endpoints News reached out to Thermo Fisher for comment, but did not receive a response as of press time.
Johns Hopkins has maintained that it never profited from the cell line, but the family has previously sought payment from the university for use of the cells.
“The seizure, experimentation, and, now, commercialization of Mrs. Lacks’ cervical cells are intertwined with an age-old practice of medical exploitation of people, who are disproportionately poor, Black, and Indigenous,” the law groups wrote. “If the Court accepts TFS’ arguments here, other beneficiaries of historic injustices will be emboldened to continue to shirk their duty to pay for the value of benefits unjustly obtained.”
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source: https://endpts.com/law-groups-professors-lash-out-against-thermo-fisher-in-suit-over-the-immortal-cells-of-henrietta-lacks/
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