On 7 August 2013, the US Nat­ ional Institutes of Health (NIH) announced that it had reached an agreement with the descendants of Henrietta Lacks concerning NIH­funded uses of the HeLa cell line [1], which, over the past 60 years has been featured in tens of thousands of experiments all over the world, and even in outer space. The origin of these cells, although never a secret, did not become w...