Some Fourteen Years On, The Lacks Family Estate Settles With… Novartis. Excellent Outcome.

We’ve now been following this narrative arc for 14 long years (feel free to search the term “HeLa”, in the search box), as the descendant-branches / extended family seeks some compensation for what was a non-consensual harvesting (at Johns Hopkins, nearly 70 years ago) of what turned out to be a wildly valuable and deeply beneficial-to-research cell line, from Henrietta Lacks’ cancerous tumors — inside her uterus. That cancer killed her, but the cell line has turned out to be… essentially… immortal.

[She was buried in a potters field, and died without a penny to her name.] In the ensuing more than half-century, various scientists, authors and journalists have pieced together her story, for the family. And several pharma cos (and Johns Hopkins, itself) have settled with them.

Tonight we are learning that Novartis too has settled — terms withheld. [The lunacy in Iran had pushed this development off the NYT front page as of Friday night, past.]

…“For 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,” Mr. Crump said in an interview.

The settlement is the second that the Lacks family has reached with a company it has accused of unjustly profiting from her cell line.

In August 2023, the Lacks family announced that it had reached an undisclosed settlement with Thermo Fisher Scientific, a Massachusetts-based firm. The family had accused it of selling the cells and trying to secure intellectual property rights on the products the cells had helped develop, without compensating the family or seeking its permission….

The family still has pending litigation against two other pharmaceutical companies: Viatris, based in Canonsburg, Pa., and Ultragenyx, based in Novato, Calif….

Now you know… and this is… some small measure of justice — even if deeply-tragically delayed. Onward to the new week ahead. [The Emmett Till live docu-drama was… overpowering — and profoundly maddening.]

नमस्ते