Henrietta Lacks, the African American patient whose cells were taken by Johns Hopkins University Hospital without her consent in 1951

Washington, October 6 (RHC)-- In the U.S., the family of Henrietta Lacks, the African American patient whose cells were taken by Johns Hopkins University Hospital without her consent in 1951, is suing the pharmaceutical company Thermo Fisher Scientific and demanding reparations and the intellectual property of those cells. 

The lawsuit denounces a racist medical system and accuses the drug company of using what is known as the “HeLa” cell line without their consent while making billions of dollars in profit. 
Seven decades ago, it was discovered that Lacks’s cells could live forever, helping scientists produce remedies for several diseases, including the first polio vaccine.