I agree: Too much water has flowed under the bridge since the "harvest" of the original cells, and the current crop of potential claimants are too far removed from Henrietta and her close family, who might ethically have been entitled to some payout for the use of the HeLa cells. And the whole class of medical and scientific users are too far removed from what might be seen as the original wrongful use of her cells. Those are essentially the practical problems.

Then as far as legalities, I question whether the state of the law at the time of "harvest" would support a claim then, let alone now.

Dave Oesterreich