New Delhi: The family of Henrietta Lacks, a Black woman from Virginia in the US who died of cervical cancer in 1951, has sued a biotech company for selling her cells, which were extracted by doctors from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore without her consent.

for reproducing and selling “stolen” cells for a profit.

The same day, marking her 70th death anniversary, the WHO awarded Lacks posthumously for her contributions to medical research.

According to the Henrietta Lacks Initiative, over 50,000,000 metric tonnes of HeLa cells have been distributed around the world for medical research