Henrietta Lacks was an African-American woman and mother who had cervical cancer and died because of that in 1951. Her cells have been used by NIH group in numerous scientific studies and have been helpful in finding many treatments, medicaments, and cures for various diseases so far. They were even named HeLa cells, which is an abbreviation of Henrietta’s full name.

However, she never gave permission for such investigations and the cells were used without her family’s knowledge. Pharmaceutical companies have made millions but did not know anything about the researchers and did not receive any financial compensation for that.

Six decades later, the National Institute of Health made an agreement with Henrietta’s family. Anyone requesting access to Henrietta’s genome data will now be obligated to ask the family and NIH for a permission. Although this will not include paying money, they say this counts as a moral victory for the Lacks’ family.

They have not and will not receive any monetary compensation for the illegal use of Henrietta Lacks’ cells, which they boldly named after her. I do not understand how this counts as a moral victory without financial compensation. Pharmaceutical companies have stolen millions from this family and they get to walk away with a “my bad” and call it a day. I really hope this family didn’t sign anything agreeing to this so called moral victory. A great philosopher once said, “Show me the money!”