I know only the thinnest of details. Only the synopsis of the story of Henrietta Lacks. I tried to read the book, but I didn’t get very far. I knew it didn’t have a happy ending.
I might have to try again, because this week I learned that the Lacks family is being compensated in some way for stealing her cells.
Way past time.
7 responses to “TWIL: Lacks Settlement”
YEP. I understand early public-benefit research not thinking about it, but as soon as anyone was making profit off the cell line: time to start paying up, buddy.
KC – But – would the hospital make a profit, or the pharmaceutical company? Well, I suppose the pharma co. would pay the hospital for the data?
To my mind, it doesn’t especially matter whether a hospital or an individual doctor or a pharma company starts making a profit off replicating the cell line and selling it to people: whoever starts making a big ol’ profit off of it should have paid royalties to the person whose unique tissues were uniquely necessary to that process, or to their family as in this case.
(not so if you donate your body to science – then it’s a donation and you know it and sure, if your toenail turns out to have a miracle cure encoded in it, then someone might profit, but you wouldn’t expect them to pay your family because you specifically made that decision; but anything with questionable or absent consent, then 1. don’t do that, get consent you jerk, but also 2. pay up if something starts being profitable.)
KC – if any toenail might have a miracle cure, it would be Spunky’s.
I mean. Obviously, from that picture.
KC – There was an interesting note in the wikipedia article about Lack’s (not Spunky’s) portrait. “The wallpaper in the painting is made up of the “Flower of Life” alluding to the immortality of her cells. The flowers on her dress resemble images of cell structures, and the two missing buttons on her dress symbolize her cells taken without permission.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Lacks#In_popular_culture
That is really, really cool. Thanks for pointing me to it!