BALTIMORE — The family of Henrietta Lacks is filing a lawsuit against Ultragenyx Pharmaceutical for the use of Lacks' cells.
The suit alleges that the Pharmaceutical company made a "conscious choice" to sell and mass produce the live of tissue of Lacks, despite their knowledge that Lacks' tissue had been taken from her without her consent by doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital.
As a result of this procedure, Lacks became infertile and nothing was done to stop the spread of her cervical cancer, which claimed her life in 1951.
According to Hopkins Medicine, around that time they would take cancerous cells to the lab for research and they noticed Lacks' cells were multiplying every 20 to 24 hours instead of dying like everyone else’s-- and that’s what birthed the HeLa cell.
RELATED: Henrietta Lacks' family reaches settlement for the use of her cells
These HeLa cells have since been used for research that has been used to help the polio vaccine and treatment of things like cancer, HIV and AIDS.
The suit alleges that Ultragenyx sells products developed with the HeLa cell line to buyers across the nation.
“Ultragenyx’s choice to continue utilizing HeLa cells despite the cell line’s origin and the concrete harm it inflicts on the Lacks family can only be understood as a choice to embrace a legacy of racial injustice embedded in the U.S. research and medical systems,” Ben Crump, the family's attorney said.
The lawsuit charges the company with unjust enrichment.
This news comes on the heels of the Lacks' family reaching a settlement with the bio tech company Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc.
The family claimed the company unjustly profited off the use of her cells.
WMAR-2 News reached out to Ultragenyx Pharmaceutical for comment, but there's been no word back.
