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.
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.