Immortal cells: Henrietta Lacks’ family settle lawsuit over HeLa tissue harvested in 1950s

Cells taken without consent from cancer victim can reproduce indefinitely and were sold for unjust profit by Thermo Fisher Scientific, relatives argued

Laboratory equipment maker Thermo Fisher Scientific has settled a lawsuit brought by the estate of Henrietta Lacks, a long-deceased cancer victim whose immortal" cells have lived on to fuel biomedical research for decades, lawyers for the estate have said.

The story of Lacks, a young African American woman who died in Baltimore in 1951, was made famous in Rebecca Skloot's 2010 book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, which became a movie in 2017 featuring Oprah Winfrey.