Henrietta Lacks settlement hailed by experts as step toward correcting medicine’s racist history
For what would have been Henrietta Lacks’s 103th birthday, her family got her some justice: A settlement with Thermo Fisher Scientific over the Massachusetts-based company’s use of cells obtained without her consent seven decades ago.
The story of Lacks, a Black woman whose cells have contributed to scientific breakthroughs ranging from the development of polio and cancer treatments to the mapping of the human genome, is one of the best-known tales of the exploitation of marginalized groups in the name of medical progress.
