"The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks"

Rebecca Skloot has a book out on Henritetta Lacks,

In 1951, an African-American woman named Henrietta Lacks was diagnosed with terminal cervical cancer. She was treated at Johns Hopkins University, where a doctor named George Gey snipped cells from her cervix without telling her. Gey discovered that Lacks' cells could not only be kept alive, but would also grow indefinitely.

For the past 60 years Lacks' cells have been cultured and used in experiments ranging from determining the long-term effects of radiation to testing the live polio vaccine. Her cells were commercialized and have generated millions of dollars in profit for the medical researchers who patented her tissue.

The big kicker here is that Lacks' family did not know of this until 20 years after her death, and I'm sure an ethical hailstorm ensued.