More than 70 years after doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital took Henrietta Lacks’ cervical cells without her knowledge, a lawyer for her descendants said they have reached a settlement with a biotechnology company they sued in 2021, accusing its leaders of reaping billions of dollars from a racist medical system.

  • notfromhere@lemmy.one
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    1 year ago

    Having not RTFA, did they take cells from other people without adequate consent? If yes it doesn’t matter that they weren’t as valuable, the same offense happened.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Of course it matters. That’s like saying it doesn’t matter that George Floyd was black because other non-black people have been killed by police. This was the exploitation of a black woman’s body for profit and her family was never compensated. Why you think that’s acceptable is beyond me.

      • notfromhere@lemmy.one
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        1 year ago

        I don’t think that’s acceptable. What I’m hearing from you is that the exploitation of a black women trumps the exploitation of everyone else for the same offense.

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Lacks was only selected at all because of race. Hopkins was the only hospital in the area that treated black people (in a segregated ward) and also poor people, which she was both. And in exchange, they used them for experiments. It absolutely was racial injustice because she would not even have been in the position to have her immortal cell line preserved had she been white.

            • snooggums@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              At least I am a jerk that can read and understand points about systemic racism without trying to dismiss it as happening to other people in a floundering display of whataboutism