The family of Henrietta Lacks, a Black cancer patient whose cells were taken by Johns Hopkins University Hospital without her consent in 1951, has settled with pharmaceutical company Thermo Fisher Scientific. Henrietta Lacks’s family has denounced the racist medical system that allowed the biotech company to make billions in profit from the “HeLa” cell line, which helped produce remedies for multiple diseases, including the first polio vaccine. Details of the settlement were not made public, but the plaintiffs celebrated the lawsuit’s resolution, which came Tuesday, on Henrietta Lack’s birthday. This is her grandson, Alfred Lacks.

Alfred Lacks Carter Jr.: “Our family member, our loved one, Henrietta Lacks, 103 years old today. And it’s been said today, it couldn’t have been a more fitting day for her to have justice, for her family to have relief. … It was a long fight. It was a long fight, over 70 years. And Henrietta Lacks gets her day.”

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