ON AUGUST 1, THE FAMILY OF Henrietta Lacks, a Black woman whose cancer cells were harvested without her knowledge and used in wide-ranging medical research over many years, settled a lawsuit against biotech company Thermo Fisher Scientific. Until now, the family has not received any compensation for Lacks’ contributions to medicine. Her story was the basis for the bestseller The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (Crown, 2010) by Rebecca Skloot and a 2017 television movie. August 1 would have been her 103rd birthday.
