Since ethics and regulations were not fully enforced back then, I don’t her family will be receipt any compensation. Some may argue that the regulation should be made to be retro-effective, but I wouldn’t agree with that. If all regulations were made retro-effective, a chaos will created. However, I do believe that the scientific world should at least recognized and acknowledged the impact of her cells and let her family have some sort of role in the future use of those cells. For instance, in 2013, scientists in Germany published a paper announcing they had sequenced the entire genome of a HeLa cell, essentially putting Lacks’s DNA sequence up on the Internet for all to see, according to the Guardian newspaper. Amazingly, they failed to alert anyone in the Lacks family about their intentions or ask their permission.
That same year, the National Institutes of Health announced that two members of the Lacks family would sit on the panel that reviews applications for the genome data and would control access to HeLa cells. The agreement did not include financial compensation for Lacks’s descendants. At least, the family now have some sort of opinion on the use of her cell.