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Legal battle over ‘immortal cells’ ends
ALL living organisms are made up of billions of cells that contain DNA. Now imagine a doctor takes your cells, multiplies it and sells it to be used in medical experiments around the world – all without your permission or knowledge. This is exactly what happened to HENRIETTA LACKS.
More than 70 years after doctors at The Johns Hopkins University Hospital in America took her cells without consent, her family have finally received justice.
Thermo Fisher, the medical equipment manufacturer that sold and distributed Henrietta’s cells, has agreed to pay her family an undisclosed amount of money in compensation.
WHO WAS HENRIETTA LACKS?
She was a black woman from the state of Virginia in America. In 1951 at age 31 she was diagnosed with cancer and sent to The Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, in the US, for treatment.
Here, doctors collected cells from a cancerous growth they’d
