Henrietta Lacks' family sues biotech company over cells, says it "chose to use her body for profit"

The estate of Henrietta Lacks sued a biotechnology company on Monday, accusing it of selling cells that doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital took from the Black woman in 1951 without her knowledge or consent as part of "a racially unjust medical system."

The estate's federal lawsuit says Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., of Waltham, Massachusetts, knowingly mass produced and sold tissue that was taken from Lacks by doctors at the hospital.

The HeLa cells taken from the woman's tumor before she died of cervical cancer became the first human cells to be successfully cloned and have been reproduced infinitely ever since. They have used in countless scientific and medical innovations including the development of the polio vaccine and gene mapping.