{"id":1831,"date":"2026-03-03T16:25:48","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T16:25:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/westcoastaftershock.com\/wca\/2026\/03\/biological-justice-henrietta-lacks-family-settles-second-lawsuit-with-big-pharma-over-stolen-cervical-cells\/"},"modified":"2026-03-03T16:25:48","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T16:25:48","slug":"biological-justice-henrietta-lacks-family-settles-second-lawsuit-with-big-pharma-over-stolen-cervical-cells","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/westcoastaftershock.com\/wca\/2026\/03\/biological-justice-henrietta-lacks-family-settles-second-lawsuit-with-big-pharma-over-stolen-cervical-cells\/","title":{"rendered":"Biological Justice: Henrietta Lacks\u2019 Family Settles Second Lawsuit With Big Pharma Over Stolen Cervical Cells"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Lawrence
Source: The Washington Post \/ Getty<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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The story of Henrietta Lacks<\/a> is one that lays bare the variety of ways in which Black people have been historically deceived, taken advantage of, played, finessed, and scammed by these United States of America. In 1951, Lacks went to the hospital, Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, desperately seeking care for cervical cancer. During that appointment, Lacks\u2019 cervical cells, known as \u201cHeLa cells\u201d, were harvested without her consent and used for decades of research and the engineering of vaccines (COVID), treatments for Parkinson\u2019s, cancer, influenza, and many others. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\"Henrietta
Source: Ben Birchall \u2013 PA Images \/ Getty<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Recently, Lacks\u2019 surviving family members have been fighting in court seeking justice for the immeasurable wrong that was done to their ancestor. According to Yahoo! News<\/a>, the family has reached their second<\/em> settlement with Big Phrama holding them accountable for their misdeeds and devious practices with the help of ubiquitous civil rights attorney Ben Crump<\/a>. This particular suit was filed against a Swiss-based company called Novartis that owns a reported hundreds of patents based on Lacks\u2019 HeLa cells.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Via New York Times<\/a>:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cNovartis was aware that these cells were taken without consent,\u201d the lawsuit said. \u201cDespite this, Novartis never sought or received permission from the estate of Henrietta Lacks to use her cells, treating them as mere tools or resources.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The details of the settlement remain private but both parties released a joint statement acknowledging that all terms have been satisfied.<\/p>\n

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\u201cMembers of the family of Henrietta Lacks and Novartis are pleased they were able to find a way to resolve this matter filed by Henrietta Lacks\u2019s estate outside of court,\u201d the statement noted.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Of course, no civil rights lawsuit settlement would be complete without attorney Crump putting a period on it.<\/p>\n

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\u201cFor the family and her grandchildren, this is certainly justice because people said they would never realize any benefit or compensation from her immortal HeLa cells, even though these pharmaceutical companies were profiting billions and billions of dollars,\u201d Crump added in a separate interview, revealing the family\u2019s satisfaction with the settlement.<\/p>\n

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There are undoubtedly more battles to win but setting these legal precedents bodes well for the future of the Lacks\u2019 family fight for justice. W\u2019s in the chat! <\/p>\n

The post Biological Justice: Henrietta Lacks\u2019 Family Settles Second Lawsuit With Big Pharma Over Stolen Cervical Cells<\/a> appeared first on Bossip<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Source: The Washington Post \/ Getty The story of Henrietta Lacks is one that lays bare the variety of ways…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14044,"featured_media":1952,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6],"tags":[10,9],"class_list":["post-1831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-rss","tag-culture","tag-hip-hop"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/westcoastaftershock.com\/wca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/westcoastaftershock.com\/wca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/westcoastaftershock.com\/wca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westcoastaftershock.com\/wca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14044"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westcoastaftershock.com\/wca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/westcoastaftershock.com\/wca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1831\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westcoastaftershock.com\/wca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/westcoastaftershock.com\/wca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westcoastaftershock.com\/wca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westcoastaftershock.com\/wca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}