July 8, 2017 • 27 mins
In this week's SYSK Select episode, after she was diagnosed with the cervical cancer that shortly killed her, a tissue sample was taken from Henrietta Lacks in 1951 without her knowledge. Those cells would go on to become the first immortal line of human cells, something of enormous benefit to science and humanity as a whole. But while the line, called HeLa cells, became a multi-billion-dollar industry, her family languished without health care insurance. Learn about this complex case of private rights and scientific advancement in this episode.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
M Hey, everybody, This is Chuck and welcome to this
week's Saturday Stuff You Should Know Selects episode. Uh. This
week was my pick, and I picked the episode on
the HeLa Cells because I think this one had a
great mix of history and science. History episodes are some
of my favorites, and we got to tell a little
(00:20):
bit of the story of the great Henrietta Lacks and
um on the science end, we got to kind of
delve into the importance of HeLa cells. So I hope
you enjoy it this time around. If you've heard it before,
give it another listen. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know
(00:41):
from House Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and Charles W. Chuck Bryant's
with me, and Cherry's with me, and that means that
the three of us all together make it s w
Should Know. Hey, man, Hey, you can see it good?
You see? So I'm pretty excited about this one. Actually,
(01:03):
oh yeah, it's been a long time coming. We have
tons of people email us about this book. This lady
in read a lax and her helok felt HeLa Heila,
it's Henrietta Lacks. It's probably a laugh I hear that,
but I think it's Heila and Helos probably the way
to go. We'll go, well, we'll just do our own thing, okay. Um,
(01:25):
but yeah, this has been like a really big fan
request over the years. Yeah, but it ties in. We
did a show on right do you own your We
have a right to privacy after you die? Yeah, and
I think that's when we got the most feedback about this. Yeah,
for sure, it ties in heavily. It definitely ties in heavily.
There's a big movement about basically respecting the dead, you know,
whether you're a an ancient mummy or a woman from
(01:50):
Baltimore and the who died in the fifties, Like how
much of an expectation of privacy and how much of
a right to what makes you you? Do you have
after you die? And the plight of Henrietta lacks Um
has definitely raised this national discussion about it, and you know, great,
(02:11):
I guess it is the only way to put it, Like,
it's really good that people are talking about this. And
it's not just privacy. There's also um a lot of
allegations of racism, profiteering. It's a really morally complicated story,
but a pretty interesting one too, because at the end
of the day, this lady has done more to further
(02:31):
science been possibly any one person on the planet. Yeah,
Jonah Sauk, you say he is he la cells? Yeah?
Is that gonna bug you every time I say that? No,
it's fun. Okay. I I've adjusted my brain so I
hear it the way that I want to now, So
(02:52):
go ahead, great. Uh, what we're talking about are the
cells of a woman, an African American woman named Henrietta
Lacks who in uh in Baltimore, Maryland. She was pregnant
with her fifth child and she felt what she described
as a not to her family inside her midsection, and
(03:15):
after childbirth, it was discovered that she had a lump
on her cervix and had cervical cancer about a year
after she gave birth. Yeah, and um, the only place
that would treat African Americans at the time in that
area was JOHNS Hopkins in Baltimore, which is sad in
its own right. So, uh, while she was sick and
(03:36):
being treated, one of her doctor's doctor, how are you
going to pronounce this? Is it gay or gay? Gay? Gay?
He was in her doctor he was he ran the
tissue culture lab. Yeah, but he um, they sent part
of her service away to a lab to get tested,
and it turns out that it was pretty remarkable in
(03:56):
the way that her cells divided. Yeah. Yeah, you gotta
understand this guy, Dr Gay. It's g g e y.
I would say gay gay? Is that what you were saying?
It could be g I just gonna call him Dr Gay.
Isn't everyone named Clark's so easy? Yeah? I'm boring though.
(04:17):
Um So, Dr Gay is basically this guy who he
his wife and an assistant run this tissue culture laboratory
at Johns Hopkins. And for literally decades, this man has
been trying to find a line of human cells that
will continue to reproduce and not just die when placed
(04:38):
in culture. One day he got a sample of some
cells taken from the tumor in Henrietta Lacks's cervix, and
he put them in culture and they started to divide.
And they divided again after that, and they divided again
after that. In every twenty four hours, the population of
soul cells and culture divided doubled. And this guy said,
(05:02):
Holy cow, this is it, Like, this is the first
time I've seen a line of immortal human cells. This
could advance science forever. By this time, I think henri
Alax was dead because was it a biopsy or was
it from her autopsy? Do you know it was from
the biopsy? But um, she passed away on October fourth, nine,
(05:24):
and I think all of this happened postmortem, and we
should like, I don't in any way want to diminish
what happened in between the time of her biopsy and
the time doctor gaze like eureka, like this woman had um.
She she got treatment, UM, but I mean the treatment
at the time was fairly primitive. Apparently radiation treatment meant
(05:44):
that you, um, you sewed little radioactive tubes into the
cervix and left them there. That was radiation treatment. There
was X ray treatment. She was in a tremendous amount
of pain. Um, and she she died horribly from this
extremely aggressive case of cervical cancer. At the time UM,
(06:07):
and she died in her family was poverty stricken. Uh.
They a lot of them didn't grow up to be
very well educated. And by the time this rolled around,
the the public awareness of Henriett Alacks's plight or post death, UM,
her family couldn't even afford healthcare for the most part,
(06:29):
which is a great irony of this whole thing. So
let's let's talk about what what happened after she died
in her m her cells continued on. Well, he named them,
first of all, and it's it's a common thing to
name the cells after the person from which they came,
and so a lot for many years people I thought
they said it was a lady named Helen Lane or
(06:50):
Helen Larson, right, because they're trying to create anonymity, like
you're trying to protect the donors identity, and they were
actually trying to throw pull off by saying they were
lying it was Helen Lane or Helen Larson. Yeah, I
don't know about that. And on an anonymity, why would
they name them after the person? Then? I don't know.
I think that they're trying to protect their their name.
(07:12):
Why would they name them after I think rather than
calling it at the time that Henrietta lacks cells, HELO
was good enough. Interesting. I would think if you're trying
to protect them, you wouldn't call it anything remotely close
to the right exactly. Well that's what they do now, Okay. Um,
So anyway, people didn't really check a lot because it's
just no one really cares that much in the medical community,
(07:33):
like who did these come from? It was really common
at the time and still to take tissue samples and
use them without consent. And that's one of the big
issues that came about later is she never knew that
her cells were going to be used in this way. Right.
Not only did she not know, her family had no
idea too. Yeah, but we should point out it wasn't
(07:54):
like against the law or anything, and there was nothing
shady going on because it was commonplace. Right. We should
also point out that Dr gay I never sought to
profit from these things. Now, he would send them off
to people for free. Um, you have to buy them
now of course. Uh. And they're all different kinds of
strains that range in prices from two fifty bucks to
(08:15):
like thousands of dollars for example. Yeah, and we'll we'll
talk about that in a little while, and like you
can get online and buy them. Yeah, right, I went
today and I added some to the cart, and then
I was like, I'm just kidding, did you that car
is like Bryant? Yeah. I just was curious, so how
easy it would be, And I don't know if there
was a something later on in that process that I
(08:36):
would have to fill out or something, but I added
it to the cart. Uh. No, I don't think you
have to fill anything out to get human culture. Really. Yeah,
you don't have to prove that you're like a researcher
or some kind. I don't think so. No, as long
as it's not like, um, a bio hazard, I think interesting.
And I know some places that charge it different prices
for nonprofits as well for the Yeah, but just that
(09:00):
much of a discount, Like I saw somewhere, it would
be like maybe you or I would pay two fifty bucks,
but if we had, if we were a five O
one C three, we'd pay like a hundred ninety. That's
not bad sixty. Yeah, I just thought it'd be more. Okay,
all right, so let's talk a little bit about why. Well,
first of all, we don't really know for sure why
(09:20):
herselves were so unique. Okay, so they think they might
have figured it out. I saw that in nature, Yes
I didn't. I don't know. I don't know. If I
thought that was solid, you didn't buy it. Well, I
don't think they even went on record saying it's super solid.
It's just a theory. So I from from what I
understand the what's her name, Rebecca Sclute? Yeah, she's who
(09:41):
wrote the book The Immortal Henry at a Las, Yes,
which is being options by Oprah Yeah for HBO. Yeah,
that would be a good one for a movie. Um.
So she apparently buys it. And because she was saying
that for many many years after the book came out,
well for a couple of years after a book came out,
because it came out in two thousand and ten, and
(10:02):
this explanation came out this year. Um that they had
to tell people on book tour, like, we have no
idea why herself kept growing and growing and now we
have a better understanding. But the explanation, Chuck and I
are referring to everybody. Um, so you get cervical cancer
from the human pepioma virus. There's two else, so it's
(10:22):
b O right, Okay, HPV and UM apparently, which is
very common by the way, Yes, um, but that's what
cervical cancer comes from Florida, I understand right. Okay, So
the HPV and Henrietta Lacks had insinuated its own genetic
(10:42):
material into her DNA right above a gene called mike
m YC and this gene, it's a regulatory gene, so
when it starts to when it's expression starts to get
hay wire, it can lead to cancer. So they think
that the placement of this HPV is what causes these
(11:04):
cells to grow and divide so quickly and so robustly,
because these HeLa cells are an immortal line of cells.
When you put them in the right conditions, you take
one cell, it will keep dividing indefinitely, And we should
probably talk about why that's a big thing, why other
people's cells don't normally do that. So before we move on,
(11:27):
I think it's a good time for a message break. Hey,
now we're back. Should we get into apoptosis? Apoptosis or
cellular suicide is or program cell death because you pick
many names. So from what I understand, program cell death
(11:47):
is like this whole general idea that a cell self destruction,
but there's different ways, and up poptosis is one of them. UM. Basically,
when a cell is no longer needed, it commits cellular suicide. Uh,
it's not abnormal or scary, UM. Healthy adults, we have
billions of cells dying in our bone matter and intestines
every hour. Yeah, and then your white blood cells come along,
(12:09):
absorb all the detritus and move you move this this
stuff out through your sweat. Yeah. It basically balances cell
division out um tissue would grow or shrink if it
wasn't for apoptosis. So it's a good thing, right. Um.
Apparently we have web fingers as we develop in the womb, right,
(12:29):
and thanks to apoptosis, these cells degrade and your fingers
go back to to non webby versions of themselves. Well,
they don't go back to or go to. Yeah. Basically
all the cells, all the cells die in between your fingers,
and you don't look like a man from Atlantis. Right.
(12:50):
And this is also, like you said, I think a
check on cancerous growth because cancer is well tumor is
a cluster of cells that are growing out of control.
One of the conditions of life is controlled growth. Cancer
is uncontrolled growth. One way to keep that in check
is to have cells have a lifespan, and they typically
do in the healthy person. The cells divide um between
(13:16):
forty and sixty times and then they die. That's what's
called the hay Flick limit. Yeah, we've talked about that. Yeah,
and do you remember what it was. We've talked about
that a few times. Yeah, well, it's just so fascinating.
It is. Uh So cancer cells, like we said, don't
have the pc D and hers, thanks to Mike, are
(13:37):
just the hardiest they had ever discovered, and uh I
went on to be used in at least sixty cases
uh in medical journals and articles. Well, this is probably
written three months ago. You know. Um eleven thousand patents
relate to the use of the he LA cells. And
(13:58):
they're easy to store, they're easy to ship. They're basically
the best cells out there to work with for most
kinds of disease, although in viruses UM, although some doctors
say they can be a little too robust and mess
things up. So they these cells are. They're extremely robust,
They divide very quickly, They're very hardy. They also apparently
(14:21):
are airborne. Is one one way that they go and
contaminate other cultures. They can easily be transferred on clothes
or gloves or whatever, so they to some researchers, they
basically are like invasive. They're an invasive cell line. Uh
and by the early seventies they contaminated so many other
(14:42):
cell lines UM that doctors had to figure out how
way to identify HeLa cells from other cells. So they said, well,
we'll just call the family and and I think nine
day las Henriette's husband got a phone call that just
completely con used him. And this is the first seat
ever heard. This is the first the family found out
(15:04):
that these cells, that that this was going on the family.
This family had no idea. Yeah, but like we said,
they weren't highly educated. So when someone calls from Johns
Hopkins and says, your wife is still alive as cells
in a lab, they were really confused. And the daughter
even thought for a while that they had literally cloned
(15:29):
her mom and that versions of the mom were living
in London. Like, you know, she had no idea what
they were talking about, right, if so? But not only that,
the call apparently was later proven to be very misleading
because they were saying, we need to find out if
your kids have cancer. So well, what they wanted was
(15:50):
to see if they had the same properties as their mom.
They wanted they wanted the kids DNA so they could
identify HeLa DNA and other cultures because it had become
so invasive, right, so they were basically saying, you guys
might have cancer. But really what they were after was
their genetic material for for DNA typing. That's right. That's
(16:12):
extremely misleading and mean because once the kids went in
and got their um blood workups done, Johns Hopkins never
called back, so they were just left to wonder what
was going on. But I mean, think about it. So
let's say somebody called you and said, hey, um, we
think you might have cancer, come in and do some
blood work. You go in and get your blood work done,
(16:34):
and then they never call you back again. Wouldn't you
be worried? I get on the phone. Sure. So, like
we said, Chuck, this is a pretty morally complex situation. Um.
When the family did finally find out, they also realized
that this this their mother's cell line. Um was a
multi billion dollar cottage industry and they hadn't seen a
(16:56):
penny from it. Um. And so medical science kind of said, well,
ho hold on, let me let's let us explain all
the great things that your mother's cells have done. Right,
And I mean there's they've been involved in some pretty
spectacular scientific achievements. Yes, like we said, the study of viruses,
everything from measles to mumps, um created vaccines. In fact,
(17:21):
curing creating a vaccine for HPV. Yeah, so that she had.
They ended up getting a vaccine for that from ourselves,
which is pretty great. Like you said, Jonas Salk. With polio,
which has been eradicated here in the West, we should
explain how that happens to Like um, when you have
a live human cell, you have an opportunity to do
(17:44):
whatever you can to it and simulate what would happen
in a normal human body. And with polio, they took
the polio virus and injected the heli cell with the
polio virus, and then they injected the heli cell with
some of Jonas Salk's polio vaccine, and the polio virus
was eradicated in that heli cell. That's right, Yeah, you
(18:07):
just figured out that your vaccine works. They've used it
to study tuberculosis. Yeah HIV, we already said HBB Parkinson's.
They've used a lot in Parkinson's research, and even in
the transportation and standardization of just using cells like this period,
(18:28):
because you know, they were so great and they wanted
to use these, they had to figure out a better
way to ship them back and forth. And just a
lot of the standardization of these procedures are in place
now because of everyone wanted to work with these cells,
which is pretty great too, So okay, chuck. Um the
family finds out about this, they spend basically decades saying like, hey,
(18:49):
can somebody fill us in on what's going on here?
How are you guys making money off of this? Like
what's the deal? And we're just being ignored, And finally
Rebecca Sclute gets some involved. Yeah, she's a science writer.
I don't think we even mentioned that. Yeah, and the
author of the Immortal Henrietta Lacks right, Yeah, I think
it's The Immortal Life, The Immortal Life of Henriette A.
(19:09):
Lacks Um. And over time Sclute kind of befriends the
family and ends up writing this book and telling the
story of Henriett of Henrietta Alacks and basically just captures
the national attention. Basically says, this family, you can make
a pretty good case, was totally exploited as a whole,
(19:32):
or by the medical establishment as a whole, and let's
talk about this, and that's exactly what happened as a result. Yeah, um,
the family did look into getting money from it, but
that is pretty much completely off the table because that
opens up a can of worms that everybody's cells ever
(19:55):
used in any experiment would have to be tracked back
to their original family members and compensated. In the courts
of resoundingly said no, no, no, we can't do that.
Set halt medical research because we know it and we
can't do that. There was a case in nineteen eighty
where this this patient with leukemia um found out that
(20:18):
his doctor had taken cells from a biopsy and created
a cell line worth three billion dollars, and this case
went all the ways Supreme Court. In the Supreme Court
said sorry, man, yeah, once it's taken from your body,
it doesn't belong to you any longer. To a lot
of people still don't necessarily agree with, but that's the
that's the status quo as it stands to think. Everybody's
(20:40):
very protective of scientific um progress, especially in in eradicating
diseases as they should be. However, earlier this year there
was finally some good news for the Lax family. UH
The National Institute of Health UM in I had to
two of her descendants to be part of the HeLa
(21:02):
Genome Data Access Working Group, which basically now they're a
part of the UM the board which considers applications to
use her cells. Yeah, because in addition, while this whole
thing is going on, this whole national conversation about what
should be done with the cell line, and um, you
know what rights a a person has to their own cells.
(21:24):
This European Scientific Agency cracked and published the HeLa genome,
which they published Henrietta Lacks's genome just out there, open
to the public. And it's been proven that you can
you can find someone's identity out just from their genome,
and you can also find out a lot about their descendants.
(21:46):
So it was a big deal. This European agency took
it down. But now it's been placed behind this UM.
It's it's under like a password, lock and key in
this database, so there's access to it. You can get
access to but you to apply to that working group.
That's right. So now the Data Access Group UM, they
apply for permission, they agree not to contact the family
(22:09):
members of Henrietta Lacks, agreed to use them only for
biomedical research only, and UM, some of the family members
will handle those requests along with uh, you know, the
other people on the board. It's not like they're the
only ones that are left to decide this of course,
and um, like I said, they did ask about paying,
and they said, maybe we can think of some other
(22:31):
ways for you to make money off this, like patenting
a genetic test for cancer based on your mom's cells.
But they have not yet come up with any way
to make money off of it. So a lot of
other people have, Like you were saying, you can go
online and buy a vial of cells for like two
bucks or something like that. There's other ones that, um,
(22:53):
you can buy that have HeLa cells that are like
ten thousand dollars. And I read this explanation of all
that that if you take one of those ten tho
dollar vials, it has all these other patented processes and
proteins and genes and things, and that that account for
that increased amount of money, that increased cost. And then
(23:16):
even the vile it's like, well, it costs money to
produce these things and store them and ship them and
all that. So the the idea that there's somebody out
there that's just making tons of cash off this is not.
That it's much more spread out and it's much less obvious,
and um, there's really not that much of a bad
(23:37):
guy in this story as much as you want there
to be. And even the author of the book is like,
there's there's a lot of like shifting sands in this
and it's not cutting dry and black and white. And
you know, at the end of the day, we want
biomedical research to keep progressing. Yeah. I don't think anyone
necessarily looking for a bad guy as much as they're
looking for a good ending for that family. Well, it
(23:58):
sounds like they got them. No, I mean they got
an apology. Yeah, there's now endowed um scholarships and chairs
at universities around the country in her name. And I
think if you use HeLa cells now in a study,
you say, these cells in this use in this study
were donated by Henrietta Lacks. Yeah, I think that was
part of the agreement. Yeah, I was talking money though,
(24:20):
you know, I got you like, they're still poor and
they still don't have medical coverage. Actually I don't know
if that's true today, but yeah, yeah, Oh, there's also
a Henrietta Lacks Foundation too. There is, Uh, you got
anything else? I got nothing else? All right, Well, if
you want to learn more about Henrietta Lacks, you should
probably go read The Immortal Life of Henrietta lacks by
(24:40):
Rebecca's glute. Sure to check out the website Foundation all
that Stuff, and you can also go on to how
stuff works dot com and type henri alas in the
search par Since I said search parts time for listener,
maybe right, I'm gonna call this bio diesel dad. Um, Guys,
after listen a ten easy ways to save money, I
(25:01):
want to tell you about my dad's super cool garage
biodiesel LOP. He got into homebrew biodesel about five years
ago and since developed a very sophisticated setup which can
produce a ninety gallon batch of biofuel in three to
five days. UH. The simple rundown is that you filter
use vegetable oil, boil off the excess water, and lie
in methanol and filter filter filter. UH. He regularly gathers
(25:25):
to used vegetable oil from various restaurants and bars around
town who are happy to give it to him. UH.
He uses the biodiesel to self sufficiently fuel my mom's SUV,
his sedan, his truck, and his twenty six ft fishing boat. UH.
No engine modification is required and can be mixed at
any ratio with normal petroleum diesel. As far as money
(25:47):
savings go, the raw chemicals only end up costing about
a dollar per gallon, so I'll let you do the math.
While I'm not recommending that everyone go out and build
their own biodiesel plant in their garage, especially since I'm
not sure how legal it is a permit, I was
wondering that too. I thought you guys would find this
interesting at least. I started listening to the show in
September during the long drive moving to Stanford where I
(26:08):
just started work as a grad student. And I've been
a die hard fan ever since. And that is from Ben.
Thanks Ben, and Ben's dad dude, I don't know his name,
but good on you, sir. Yeah, it's pretty cool. French
fire machine. Yeah uh oh, let's see if your family
members are doing something pretty interesting, we want to hear
(26:29):
about it from you. You can tweet to us at
s Y s K podcast. You can join us on
Facebook dot com, slash so if you should know, you
can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at Discovery
dot com, and you can join us at our website,
Stuff you Should Know dot com for more on this
(26:49):
and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works?
Dot com
M Hey, everybody, This is Chuck and welcome to this
week's Saturday Stuff You Should Know Selects episode. Uh. This
week was my pick, and I picked the episode on
the HeLa Cells because I think this one had a
great mix of history and science. History episodes are some
of my favorites, and we got to tell a little
(00:20):
bit of the story of the great Henrietta Lacks and
um on the science end, we got to kind of
delve into the importance of HeLa cells. So I hope
you enjoy it this time around. If you've heard it before,
give it another listen. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know
(00:41):
from House Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and Charles W. Chuck Bryant's
with me, and Cherry's with me, and that means that
the three of us all together make it s w
Should Know. Hey, man, Hey, you can see it good?
You see? So I'm pretty excited about this one. Actually,
(01:03):
oh yeah, it's been a long time coming. We have
tons of people email us about this book. This lady
in read a lax and her helok felt HeLa Heila,
it's Henrietta Lacks. It's probably a laugh I hear that,
but I think it's Heila and Helos probably the way
to go. We'll go, well, we'll just do our own thing, okay. Um,
(01:25):
but yeah, this has been like a really big fan
request over the years. Yeah, but it ties in. We
did a show on right do you own your We
have a right to privacy after you die? Yeah, and
I think that's when we got the most feedback about this. Yeah,
for sure, it ties in heavily. It definitely ties in heavily.
There's a big movement about basically respecting the dead, you know,
whether you're a an ancient mummy or a woman from
(01:50):
Baltimore and the who died in the fifties, Like how
much of an expectation of privacy and how much of
a right to what makes you you? Do you have
after you die? And the plight of Henrietta lacks Um
has definitely raised this national discussion about it, and you know, great,
(02:11):
I guess it is the only way to put it, Like,
it's really good that people are talking about this. And
it's not just privacy. There's also um a lot of
allegations of racism, profiteering. It's a really morally complicated story,
but a pretty interesting one too, because at the end
of the day, this lady has done more to further
(02:31):
science been possibly any one person on the planet. Yeah,
Jonah Sauk, you say he is he la cells? Yeah?
Is that gonna bug you every time I say that? No,
it's fun. Okay. I I've adjusted my brain so I
hear it the way that I want to now, So
(02:52):
go ahead, great. Uh, what we're talking about are the
cells of a woman, an African American woman named Henrietta
Lacks who in uh in Baltimore, Maryland. She was pregnant
with her fifth child and she felt what she described
as a not to her family inside her midsection, and
(03:15):
after childbirth, it was discovered that she had a lump
on her cervix and had cervical cancer about a year
after she gave birth. Yeah, and um, the only place
that would treat African Americans at the time in that
area was JOHNS Hopkins in Baltimore, which is sad in
its own right. So, uh, while she was sick and
(03:36):
being treated, one of her doctor's doctor, how are you
going to pronounce this? Is it gay or gay? Gay? Gay?
He was in her doctor he was he ran the
tissue culture lab. Yeah, but he um, they sent part
of her service away to a lab to get tested,
and it turns out that it was pretty remarkable in
(03:56):
the way that her cells divided. Yeah. Yeah, you gotta
understand this guy, Dr Gay. It's g g e y.
I would say gay gay? Is that what you were saying?
It could be g I just gonna call him Dr Gay.
Isn't everyone named Clark's so easy? Yeah? I'm boring though.
(04:17):
Um So, Dr Gay is basically this guy who he
his wife and an assistant run this tissue culture laboratory
at Johns Hopkins. And for literally decades, this man has
been trying to find a line of human cells that
will continue to reproduce and not just die when placed
(04:38):
in culture. One day he got a sample of some
cells taken from the tumor in Henrietta Lacks's cervix, and
he put them in culture and they started to divide.
And they divided again after that, and they divided again
after that. In every twenty four hours, the population of
soul cells and culture divided doubled. And this guy said,
(05:02):
Holy cow, this is it, Like, this is the first
time I've seen a line of immortal human cells. This
could advance science forever. By this time, I think henri
Alax was dead because was it a biopsy or was
it from her autopsy? Do you know it was from
the biopsy? But um, she passed away on October fourth, nine,
(05:24):
and I think all of this happened postmortem, and we
should like, I don't in any way want to diminish
what happened in between the time of her biopsy and
the time doctor gaze like eureka, like this woman had um.
She she got treatment, UM, but I mean the treatment
at the time was fairly primitive. Apparently radiation treatment meant
(05:44):
that you, um, you sewed little radioactive tubes into the
cervix and left them there. That was radiation treatment. There
was X ray treatment. She was in a tremendous amount
of pain. Um, and she she died horribly from this
extremely aggressive case of cervical cancer. At the time UM,
(06:07):
and she died in her family was poverty stricken. Uh.
They a lot of them didn't grow up to be
very well educated. And by the time this rolled around,
the the public awareness of Henriett Alacks's plight or post death, UM,
her family couldn't even afford healthcare for the most part,
(06:29):
which is a great irony of this whole thing. So
let's let's talk about what what happened after she died
in her m her cells continued on. Well, he named them,
first of all, and it's it's a common thing to
name the cells after the person from which they came,
and so a lot for many years people I thought
they said it was a lady named Helen Lane or
(06:50):
Helen Larson, right, because they're trying to create anonymity, like
you're trying to protect the donors identity, and they were
actually trying to throw pull off by saying they were
lying it was Helen Lane or Helen Larson. Yeah, I
don't know about that. And on an anonymity, why would
they name them after the person? Then? I don't know.
I think that they're trying to protect their their name.
(07:12):
Why would they name them after I think rather than
calling it at the time that Henrietta lacks cells, HELO
was good enough. Interesting. I would think if you're trying
to protect them, you wouldn't call it anything remotely close
to the right exactly. Well that's what they do now, Okay. Um,
So anyway, people didn't really check a lot because it's
just no one really cares that much in the medical community,
(07:33):
like who did these come from? It was really common
at the time and still to take tissue samples and
use them without consent. And that's one of the big
issues that came about later is she never knew that
her cells were going to be used in this way. Right.
Not only did she not know, her family had no
idea too. Yeah, but we should point out it wasn't
(07:54):
like against the law or anything, and there was nothing
shady going on because it was commonplace. Right. We should
also point out that Dr gay I never sought to
profit from these things. Now, he would send them off
to people for free. Um, you have to buy them
now of course. Uh. And they're all different kinds of
strains that range in prices from two fifty bucks to
(08:15):
like thousands of dollars for example. Yeah, and we'll we'll
talk about that in a little while, and like you
can get online and buy them. Yeah, right, I went
today and I added some to the cart, and then
I was like, I'm just kidding, did you that car
is like Bryant? Yeah. I just was curious, so how
easy it would be, And I don't know if there
was a something later on in that process that I
(08:36):
would have to fill out or something, but I added
it to the cart. Uh. No, I don't think you
have to fill anything out to get human culture. Really. Yeah,
you don't have to prove that you're like a researcher
or some kind. I don't think so. No, as long
as it's not like, um, a bio hazard, I think interesting.
And I know some places that charge it different prices
for nonprofits as well for the Yeah, but just that
(09:00):
much of a discount, Like I saw somewhere, it would
be like maybe you or I would pay two fifty bucks,
but if we had, if we were a five O
one C three, we'd pay like a hundred ninety. That's
not bad sixty. Yeah, I just thought it'd be more. Okay,
all right, so let's talk a little bit about why. Well,
first of all, we don't really know for sure why
(09:20):
herselves were so unique. Okay, so they think they might
have figured it out. I saw that in nature, Yes
I didn't. I don't know. I don't know. If I
thought that was solid, you didn't buy it. Well, I
don't think they even went on record saying it's super solid.
It's just a theory. So I from from what I
understand the what's her name, Rebecca Sclute? Yeah, she's who
(09:41):
wrote the book The Immortal Henry at a Las, Yes,
which is being options by Oprah Yeah for HBO. Yeah,
that would be a good one for a movie. Um.
So she apparently buys it. And because she was saying
that for many many years after the book came out,
well for a couple of years after a book came out,
because it came out in two thousand and ten, and
(10:02):
this explanation came out this year. Um that they had
to tell people on book tour, like, we have no
idea why herself kept growing and growing and now we
have a better understanding. But the explanation, Chuck and I
are referring to everybody. Um, so you get cervical cancer
from the human pepioma virus. There's two else, so it's
(10:22):
b O right, Okay, HPV and UM apparently, which is
very common by the way, Yes, um, but that's what
cervical cancer comes from Florida, I understand right. Okay, So
the HPV and Henrietta Lacks had insinuated its own genetic
(10:42):
material into her DNA right above a gene called mike
m YC and this gene, it's a regulatory gene, so
when it starts to when it's expression starts to get
hay wire, it can lead to cancer. So they think
that the placement of this HPV is what causes these
(11:04):
cells to grow and divide so quickly and so robustly,
because these HeLa cells are an immortal line of cells.
When you put them in the right conditions, you take
one cell, it will keep dividing indefinitely, And we should
probably talk about why that's a big thing, why other
people's cells don't normally do that. So before we move on,
(11:27):
I think it's a good time for a message break. Hey,
now we're back. Should we get into apoptosis? Apoptosis or
cellular suicide is or program cell death because you pick
many names. So from what I understand, program cell death
(11:47):
is like this whole general idea that a cell self destruction,
but there's different ways, and up poptosis is one of them. UM. Basically,
when a cell is no longer needed, it commits cellular suicide. Uh,
it's not abnormal or scary, UM. Healthy adults, we have
billions of cells dying in our bone matter and intestines
every hour. Yeah, and then your white blood cells come along,
(12:09):
absorb all the detritus and move you move this this
stuff out through your sweat. Yeah. It basically balances cell
division out um tissue would grow or shrink if it
wasn't for apoptosis. So it's a good thing, right. Um.
Apparently we have web fingers as we develop in the womb, right,
(12:29):
and thanks to apoptosis, these cells degrade and your fingers
go back to to non webby versions of themselves. Well,
they don't go back to or go to. Yeah. Basically
all the cells, all the cells die in between your fingers,
and you don't look like a man from Atlantis. Right.
(12:50):
And this is also, like you said, I think a
check on cancerous growth because cancer is well tumor is
a cluster of cells that are growing out of control.
One of the conditions of life is controlled growth. Cancer
is uncontrolled growth. One way to keep that in check
is to have cells have a lifespan, and they typically
do in the healthy person. The cells divide um between
(13:16):
forty and sixty times and then they die. That's what's
called the hay Flick limit. Yeah, we've talked about that. Yeah,
and do you remember what it was. We've talked about
that a few times. Yeah, well, it's just so fascinating.
It is. Uh So cancer cells, like we said, don't
have the pc D and hers, thanks to Mike, are
(13:37):
just the hardiest they had ever discovered, and uh I
went on to be used in at least sixty cases
uh in medical journals and articles. Well, this is probably
written three months ago. You know. Um eleven thousand patents
relate to the use of the he LA cells. And
(13:58):
they're easy to store, they're easy to ship. They're basically
the best cells out there to work with for most
kinds of disease, although in viruses UM, although some doctors
say they can be a little too robust and mess
things up. So they these cells are. They're extremely robust,
They divide very quickly, They're very hardy. They also apparently
(14:21):
are airborne. Is one one way that they go and
contaminate other cultures. They can easily be transferred on clothes
or gloves or whatever, so they to some researchers, they
basically are like invasive. They're an invasive cell line. Uh
and by the early seventies they contaminated so many other
(14:42):
cell lines UM that doctors had to figure out how
way to identify HeLa cells from other cells. So they said, well,
we'll just call the family and and I think nine
day las Henriette's husband got a phone call that just
completely con used him. And this is the first seat
ever heard. This is the first the family found out
(15:04):
that these cells, that that this was going on the family.
This family had no idea. Yeah, but like we said,
they weren't highly educated. So when someone calls from Johns
Hopkins and says, your wife is still alive as cells
in a lab, they were really confused. And the daughter
even thought for a while that they had literally cloned
(15:29):
her mom and that versions of the mom were living
in London. Like, you know, she had no idea what
they were talking about, right, if so? But not only that,
the call apparently was later proven to be very misleading
because they were saying, we need to find out if
your kids have cancer. So well, what they wanted was
(15:50):
to see if they had the same properties as their mom.
They wanted they wanted the kids DNA so they could
identify HeLa DNA and other cultures because it had become
so invasive, right, so they were basically saying, you guys
might have cancer. But really what they were after was
their genetic material for for DNA typing. That's right. That's
(16:12):
extremely misleading and mean because once the kids went in
and got their um blood workups done, Johns Hopkins never
called back, so they were just left to wonder what
was going on. But I mean, think about it. So
let's say somebody called you and said, hey, um, we
think you might have cancer, come in and do some
blood work. You go in and get your blood work done,
(16:34):
and then they never call you back again. Wouldn't you
be worried? I get on the phone. Sure. So, like
we said, Chuck, this is a pretty morally complex situation. Um.
When the family did finally find out, they also realized
that this this their mother's cell line. Um was a
multi billion dollar cottage industry and they hadn't seen a
(16:56):
penny from it. Um. And so medical science kind of said, well,
ho hold on, let me let's let us explain all
the great things that your mother's cells have done. Right,
And I mean there's they've been involved in some pretty
spectacular scientific achievements. Yes, like we said, the study of viruses,
everything from measles to mumps, um created vaccines. In fact,
(17:21):
curing creating a vaccine for HPV. Yeah, so that she had.
They ended up getting a vaccine for that from ourselves,
which is pretty great. Like you said, Jonas Salk. With polio,
which has been eradicated here in the West, we should
explain how that happens to Like um, when you have
a live human cell, you have an opportunity to do
(17:44):
whatever you can to it and simulate what would happen
in a normal human body. And with polio, they took
the polio virus and injected the heli cell with the
polio virus, and then they injected the heli cell with
some of Jonas Salk's polio vaccine, and the polio virus
was eradicated in that heli cell. That's right, Yeah, you
(18:07):
just figured out that your vaccine works. They've used it
to study tuberculosis. Yeah HIV, we already said HBB Parkinson's.
They've used a lot in Parkinson's research, and even in
the transportation and standardization of just using cells like this period,
(18:28):
because you know, they were so great and they wanted
to use these, they had to figure out a better
way to ship them back and forth. And just a
lot of the standardization of these procedures are in place
now because of everyone wanted to work with these cells,
which is pretty great too, So okay, chuck. Um the
family finds out about this, they spend basically decades saying like, hey,
(18:49):
can somebody fill us in on what's going on here?
How are you guys making money off of this? Like
what's the deal? And we're just being ignored, And finally
Rebecca Sclute gets some involved. Yeah, she's a science writer.
I don't think we even mentioned that. Yeah, and the
author of the Immortal Henrietta Lacks right, Yeah, I think
it's The Immortal Life, The Immortal Life of Henriette A.
(19:09):
Lacks Um. And over time Sclute kind of befriends the
family and ends up writing this book and telling the
story of Henriett of Henrietta Alacks and basically just captures
the national attention. Basically says, this family, you can make
a pretty good case, was totally exploited as a whole,
(19:32):
or by the medical establishment as a whole, and let's
talk about this, and that's exactly what happened as a result. Yeah, um,
the family did look into getting money from it, but
that is pretty much completely off the table because that
opens up a can of worms that everybody's cells ever
(19:55):
used in any experiment would have to be tracked back
to their original family members and compensated. In the courts
of resoundingly said no, no, no, we can't do that.
Set halt medical research because we know it and we
can't do that. There was a case in nineteen eighty
where this this patient with leukemia um found out that
(20:18):
his doctor had taken cells from a biopsy and created
a cell line worth three billion dollars, and this case
went all the ways Supreme Court. In the Supreme Court
said sorry, man, yeah, once it's taken from your body,
it doesn't belong to you any longer. To a lot
of people still don't necessarily agree with, but that's the
that's the status quo as it stands to think. Everybody's
(20:40):
very protective of scientific um progress, especially in in eradicating
diseases as they should be. However, earlier this year there
was finally some good news for the Lax family. UH
The National Institute of Health UM in I had to
two of her descendants to be part of the HeLa
(21:02):
Genome Data Access Working Group, which basically now they're a
part of the UM the board which considers applications to
use her cells. Yeah, because in addition, while this whole
thing is going on, this whole national conversation about what
should be done with the cell line, and um, you
know what rights a a person has to their own cells.
(21:24):
This European Scientific Agency cracked and published the HeLa genome,
which they published Henrietta Lacks's genome just out there, open
to the public. And it's been proven that you can
you can find someone's identity out just from their genome,
and you can also find out a lot about their descendants.
(21:46):
So it was a big deal. This European agency took
it down. But now it's been placed behind this UM.
It's it's under like a password, lock and key in
this database, so there's access to it. You can get
access to but you to apply to that working group.
That's right. So now the Data Access Group UM, they
apply for permission, they agree not to contact the family
(22:09):
members of Henrietta Lacks, agreed to use them only for
biomedical research only, and UM, some of the family members
will handle those requests along with uh, you know, the
other people on the board. It's not like they're the
only ones that are left to decide this of course,
and um, like I said, they did ask about paying,
and they said, maybe we can think of some other
(22:31):
ways for you to make money off this, like patenting
a genetic test for cancer based on your mom's cells.
But they have not yet come up with any way
to make money off of it. So a lot of
other people have, Like you were saying, you can go
online and buy a vial of cells for like two
bucks or something like that. There's other ones that, um,
(22:53):
you can buy that have HeLa cells that are like
ten thousand dollars. And I read this explanation of all
that that if you take one of those ten tho
dollar vials, it has all these other patented processes and
proteins and genes and things, and that that account for
that increased amount of money, that increased cost. And then
(23:16):
even the vile it's like, well, it costs money to
produce these things and store them and ship them and
all that. So the the idea that there's somebody out
there that's just making tons of cash off this is not.
That it's much more spread out and it's much less obvious,
and um, there's really not that much of a bad
(23:37):
guy in this story as much as you want there
to be. And even the author of the book is like,
there's there's a lot of like shifting sands in this
and it's not cutting dry and black and white. And
you know, at the end of the day, we want
biomedical research to keep progressing. Yeah. I don't think anyone
necessarily looking for a bad guy as much as they're
looking for a good ending for that family. Well, it
(23:58):
sounds like they got them. No, I mean they got
an apology. Yeah, there's now endowed um scholarships and chairs
at universities around the country in her name. And I
think if you use HeLa cells now in a study,
you say, these cells in this use in this study
were donated by Henrietta Lacks. Yeah, I think that was
part of the agreement. Yeah, I was talking money though,
(24:20):
you know, I got you like, they're still poor and
they still don't have medical coverage. Actually I don't know
if that's true today, but yeah, yeah, Oh, there's also
a Henrietta Lacks Foundation too. There is, Uh, you got
anything else? I got nothing else? All right, Well, if
you want to learn more about Henrietta Lacks, you should
probably go read The Immortal Life of Henrietta lacks by
(24:40):
Rebecca's glute. Sure to check out the website Foundation all
that Stuff, and you can also go on to how
stuff works dot com and type henri alas in the
search par Since I said search parts time for listener,
maybe right, I'm gonna call this bio diesel dad. Um, Guys,
after listen a ten easy ways to save money, I
(25:01):
want to tell you about my dad's super cool garage
biodiesel LOP. He got into homebrew biodesel about five years
ago and since developed a very sophisticated setup which can
produce a ninety gallon batch of biofuel in three to
five days. UH. The simple rundown is that you filter
use vegetable oil, boil off the excess water, and lie
in methanol and filter filter filter. UH. He regularly gathers
(25:25):
to used vegetable oil from various restaurants and bars around
town who are happy to give it to him. UH.
He uses the biodiesel to self sufficiently fuel my mom's SUV,
his sedan, his truck, and his twenty six ft fishing boat. UH.
No engine modification is required and can be mixed at
any ratio with normal petroleum diesel. As far as money
(25:47):
savings go, the raw chemicals only end up costing about
a dollar per gallon, so I'll let you do the math.
While I'm not recommending that everyone go out and build
their own biodiesel plant in their garage, especially since I'm
not sure how legal it is a permit, I was
wondering that too. I thought you guys would find this
interesting at least. I started listening to the show in
September during the long drive moving to Stanford where I
(26:08):
just started work as a grad student. And I've been
a die hard fan ever since. And that is from Ben.
Thanks Ben, and Ben's dad dude, I don't know his name,
but good on you, sir. Yeah, it's pretty cool. French
fire machine. Yeah uh oh, let's see if your family
members are doing something pretty interesting, we want to hear
(26:29):
about it from you. You can tweet to us at
s Y s K podcast. You can join us on
Facebook dot com, slash so if you should know, you
can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at Discovery
dot com, and you can join us at our website,
Stuff you Should Know dot com for more on this
(26:49):
and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works?
Dot com
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
Show Links
AboutOrder Our BookStoreSYSK ArmyRSSPopular Podcasts
40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season
Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.