The Henrietta Lacks settlement is bigger than one family’s victory

^{"Henrietta Lacks historical marker; Clover, VA," by EMW licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0} 

Like many women, I push a tiny pill out of a rectangular pack each day and pop it in my mouth.

For years, I never gave that act much thought. Birth control pills are one of the most common forms of contraception and have allowed countless women the freedom to decide when they want to start their families. When a doctor first prescribed them to me, that’s how I viewed them — as a way to plan for the future. I saw them only in the context of looking forward.

But that changed several years ago. I grew curious about the history of those pills and decided to look back at how they came to exist on the market.

What I found showed me how little we know about the dark parts of the country’s medical practices. I found myself reading about one medical breakthrough after another that used Black and Brown bodies, often without full disclosure to the participants, to achieve advancements that...