February 17, 2022 • 37 mins
Today we dive into the science behind the genetic condition albinism, which is not pronounced how you think it is.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too. So it's a
good old fashioned bout of stuff you should know. Ready
to kick you in the duff. Oh my gosh, about
(00:23):
where we a sickness? Yeah, some some would say, oh dear,
I'm ready for this one. I'm so excited because awesome,
I understand genetics and chemistry like I've never understood it
before in my life. Well, I think that a little
credit goes to our palagraphs or who has a knack
(00:44):
for explaining very complex science stuff. Uh. And we also
need to shout out, as usual when it comes to science.
A kid's website, which is in this case Frontiers for
Young Minds. That was a really good one. Yeah. They
had a pretty good breakdown on albinism. Not albinism, let's
just get that out of the way. Yeah. And I
(01:05):
also tried to find out it it doesn't seem appropriate
to say albinos. Uh. I didn't expressly see that anywhere,
but it just it seems like with the how we
refer to things these days, that that that that stands
out as something that we shouldn't do. Certainly did you
find that though I did not, I didn't um, although
(01:25):
there are all sorts of like um like pro social
sites for people with albinism all over the place. I'm
surprised we didn't run into that, but because I saw
it used. But I'm gonna err on the side of
caution and just say albinism, yeah, totally, or people with
albinism right well sure, or plants. Yeah, that's that's something
(01:50):
that came up. Like certainly you've you're familiar that you know,
not all it's not just people who can have albinism,
but that um animals can too. Every once in a
while you hear about it very rare like um uh,
like a shark with albinism or like you said, an
alligator with albinism. It's just so um stark and surprising.
One of the reasons why is because it's exceedingly rare
(02:13):
in the animal kingdom. UM. But it's still around, and
it's not just mammals that can have albinism too, although
it would make a lot more sense if it was
just mammals that got it because it affects a very
specific part of the body, the Melana sites, which we'll
talk about in great, great, great detail a little bit um.
(02:35):
But but that like, uh, like a whole cascade of
events goes from or it takes place within those Melana sites,
and any part of that can get messed up or disordered.
And those those are what are the basis of the
different types of albanism, as we'll see. Yeah, and you
know the reason that you you indicated that it was
super rare to see like a guerilla with albinism, although
(02:58):
you can see that's because and we'll get into the
genetics more specifically, but it's in autosomal recessive trait, which
means that both of your parents have to have this
Albanism gene. So, I mean, it's rare enough in humans
when two people fall in love and mate for life
and stuff like that. But when you're counting on two
(03:21):
sharks that happened to swim by, that happened to have that, uh,
express their genes that way, and they happen to, you know,
get friendly with one another, bump up against one another.
Sure rub fins, however sharks do that thing. Uh, it
makes it even more rare because you're counting on um
almost just like you know, fate or destiny, not destiny.
(03:44):
Let's not get hippie dippy about it. But you know,
a couple of guerillas getting together in the midst that
both have this genetic gene. They wait for the mist
to settle and then they're like, no one can see
I just said genetic gene too. That's just what I know.
So yeah, for whatever reason, Chuck, whether it's like because
the populations are isolated or what, but it it does
(04:04):
seem to be much rarer. Albanism does seem to be
much rare in like the wild than it is among humans.
And even in like some human populations, it's like you
could call it not rare at all. Like if you
go to some parts of Africa, UM, some parts of
central or South America, UM, you'll find you'll find groups
(04:24):
that like are fairly small genetically speaking, um and and
the and albinism has just become kind of like an
endemic trade among the population. Yeah. And I think that's
even where the first uh, the word albino was first
used in the eighteen hundreds in Africa for people that
(04:45):
had albinism. And it's I think the root is the
Latin albus or albo from Spanish, Spanish and Portuguese. That's right.
So when we're talking about albinism, I think most people
probably know what we're talking about. But um use, really,
when you see a person with albinism, they have either
totally white hair or a very light colored hair UM
(05:09):
usually UM, little to no skin pigmentation UM. Or they
can have kind of like a yellowish or pinkish skin pigmentation. UM.
They might have eyes that lack color or seem red,
which apparently has to do with the blood vessels in
the eye reflecting the red light from well back out
(05:31):
at you the viewer. But all of this has to
do with a complete in total or a greatly reduced
lack of melanin. Right. Yeah, And you know, if we're
gonna crumble a myth, we can crumble the myth that
um you are not. Like, if you have albinism and
you don't have red eyes or pink eyes, then you
(05:52):
don't have true albinism, And that's not true at all.
There are a lot of different kinds of albinism, and
depending on the way that genes express themselves, there can
be a range of of effects on your body. Uh
ed was mentioned even with the plant Kingdom with maize,
you know, there's uh you can have and it's not
(06:12):
white corn. That's a different thing altogether. But if you,
because it trusts me, if you look up albanism and corn,
the first thing you're gonna see as a corn snake.
Even if you so you have to type in maze
and then you're just gonna see white corn. But there
are a few different kinds of albinism and maze, one
of which basically is no pigment or chlorophyll, and that's
(06:33):
not even gonna survive because it's a plant, one that
will eventually become just a regular ear of corn. And
then a third type, which is really interesting. It's striped
and some parts have that pigment in some parts don't. Yeah,
And like, if you put two different types of albinism,
whether it's corn or humans together, the person who has
(06:55):
both of those different traits probably won't appear to have
albinism all because you have to have matching gene mutations
to have an autosomal recessive uh uh genetic disorder in
albi is one of those, like you said, yeah, And interestingly,
if you just sort of look at it in a vacuum.
(07:17):
Albinism isn't necessarily harmful. Uh. There can be comorbidities, and
there can be other effects that happen, of course, like
with things like sun and sunburn and sun exposure, and
there's our vision problems that can happen, and we'll get
into all this more specifically, but just by itself, albinism
isn't necessarily harmful to a person or a population, right,
(07:41):
And there's different types to their syndromic and non syndromic,
and syndromic means that you usually have other related health issues,
and there are syndromic types of albinism. But one of
the things that tends to UM tends to go along
with albinism, along with the lack of skin and hair
or pigmentation UM is vision problems, which we'll talk about,
(08:05):
but there's other stuff too. There's they've correlated UM autism
with albinism, which I couldn't find a lot on, but
it maybe wonder there's also a correlation between vision um
problems and autism, and it's possible, they theorize because no
one knows at this point what the correlation is, but
they theorized that UM has to do with a low
(08:26):
level of visual input leading to autism. So it's possible
that if you have a low level of visual input
because of albinism, that could lead to autism as well, potentially. Right,
so much we don't know, but we do know that
it is albinism is a neural crest disorder. And this
basically means, I mean, we can get as as wonky
(08:49):
here science wise as you want to, but the easy
version is it means that it's very early in embryonic development, uh,
when a group of cells is folding into a crest,
and at this point, if something is going on with
those cells, it can affect a lot of different things
moving forward, including albinism. Right, Because those neural crests, when
they form the extremely early embryonic stage, they form um cartilage, bone, skin,
(09:16):
smooth muscle, cells, neurons, They differentiate into a bunch of
different stuff. But the point of that is is that
like you're the gene that is responsible for whatever type
of albinism you have, um like differentiated like really early on,
long before many other genes were active. It also it
also points out, Chuck, I think, um, something that's that's
(09:39):
worth mentioning that at this point because it's a genetic disorder,
and apparently in extraordinarily early in development genetic disorder. Um,
there's no treatment for albinism. Everything treating is just to
take care of the the symptoms that come along with it.
I think that's a good overviewed to get us going.
Don't you think so too. Yeah, let's let's take a break.
(10:01):
I smell a break. Yeah. Well, in fact, I could
just be done and we could just run a bunch
of ads if you want to do it that way.
I don't think everybody would like that. I think they'd
rather hear is muddle through albinism. All right, we'll do
a couple of messages from our sponsors and we'll be
right back as watch skul So, when most people think
(10:37):
of albinism, chuck Um, what they're actually thinking of is
a specific type called oculo cutaneous albinism or O c A,
which is the most prevalent form, but it's also the
most distinct form as well. Yeah, and this is you know,
if you've ever seen the musician Johnny Winner or or
Edgar Winner or uh, you know a lot of times
(10:59):
people with alba is m will be cast in movies unfairly.
A lot of times it's it's the bad guy because
they have a unique look. Uh, and you know, it's
Hollywood and that's kind of what they do exactly. And
we'll get into that later on too. But um, it's
funny though. I did see a couple of videos where
people with albinism sat and watched movie characters of people
(11:23):
with albinism and basically just sort of made fun of it.
They're just like, Okay, another bad guy. That's a surprise.
But that's exactly that's what you're talking about. It. That's
o c A. One is when you're talking about maybe
someone with the pink or red eyes, the lack of pigment,
the skin, that white white hair, right, um, and that one.
(11:44):
So there's supposedly there's somewhere between four and maybe even
nine different forms, but most scientists who study albinism recognize
maybe four to five different forms. The rest of them are, um,
these really really almost ex oddic rare mutations that have
occurred in these really isolated communities where albinism is actually
(12:06):
common enough that it just is mutating in a new form.
So most people say four to five forms. Um, And
if you're like the easygoing type, you just call it
type one type two. If you're high strung like me,
you probably call the most common one O C A
one A. There's also O C A one B, O
C A two, O C A UM three and four
(12:27):
and so on, actually not so on. That's that's all
of them. But the thing that all of these are,
at least most of them sharing common is that there's
either a total or complete lack of pigmentation. And then
again it affects the eyes because it's that ocular cutaneous albinism.
And so with this lack of pigmentation, that one, uh,
(12:51):
that's that most people think of when they think of albinism.
O C A one A there's like no pigmentation whatsoever.
And everybody with albinism has those those pigment forming cells
melana sites. It's just the for different reasons, those melano
sites are not producing pigments to varying degrees, and in
(13:12):
O C A one eight they're not producing pigment at all. Right, So,
like you kind of said at the beginning, if you
see someone that has the red or pinkish eyes, it's
those are the blood vessels that you're saying. Because of
the lack of pigment, and that's what's also going to
lead to those vision problems. Uh. Like you kind of
hinted at it. You know, a lot more light is
going to be entering your eye that's not being absorbed
(13:35):
like it would if you have pigment in your eye.
It's not being diffracted. Uh at the very least, if
you have albinism, you're probably gonna be really sensitive delight. Um.
But it can also actually damage the retina as well, right,
which is a big one. Um. As we'll see, that's
a it's a huge problem that the idea that um
it's called photophobia, like deep sensitivity to light. Yeah. Um.
(13:58):
And then also you you just can't see as well,
um like you can in that in turn can lead
to problems with learning in high school drops. It's like
a cascading effect that all just chickins with not enough
pigment in the eye. It's really astounding with just something
that seems kind of small has like the impacts that
it has. Yeah. And you know the great thing about
(14:18):
most schools systems these days is they make great efforts
for any kind of uh kid in school that has
any sort of a challenge to say like, all right,
well we have something to accommodate for that now. But
it you know, it's taken a long time to get
to this point and we still have a long way
to go. But you know, you can't imagine somebody with
albinism in the nineteen you know, thirties, forties, fifties, sixties, seventies,
(14:43):
and what schooling must have been like when it was
basically just like sorry, you know, you can't you obviously
can't keep up. You're struggling to learn to read, and
we don't quite know what to do with that, right
and there, and and they always punctuated with him. And
by the way, everything your classmates are saying about you
is true. Hopefully teachers are at least kind about it
(15:07):
even back then. Maybe, but kids are always mean. Yeah,
for sure. They're getting nicer, though, are they. That's great, man,
that's a huge improvement. Well, they are, but it's um,
I mean, obviously they're still bullying and a lot of
problems with that stuff. But the kids are getting better
because it's I think we've proven as parents and educators
that that can be taught, that you start them at
(15:28):
a young age teaching about facial differences. Or just any
kind of differences and that you know that we're all
the same. Uh. You know, it sounds very free to
be you and me, but we're all the same on
the inside. And so that kind of like teaching that
stuff actually works. That's why it's frustrating when people push
back on that kind of thing. Yeah, I don't want
Mike could be nice. You can't make my kid be nice.
(15:50):
It's a First Amendment issue. That was just a little
soapox moment for me. I like it. I put one
foot up on there with you too, Thank you so
um so there's room for you in eat chuck. Yeah,
Jerry's always up here. Of course she won't stop. It's
a little much if you ask me, so, chuck. Before
we keep moving on, because I think we need to
(16:11):
talk about that social aspect of albinism now. Um but
but before we hit that, I want to say, there's
one other thing that one of the big differentiators about
between the different types of albinism is, like we were saying,
at what point in the process of creating melanin that
the pigmentation um is disrupted, means that you could actually
(16:36):
produce some levels of pigment or some different types of pigment. Like,
we have a couple of types of pigment that we
produce us humans. You melanin, that's one. That's the money melanin.
Everybody thinks about its like it produces like the browns
and everything like that. It gives you your tan if
you have brown or dark hair, that's all you melanin.
(16:56):
But there's also fail melanin, which is kind of a
red yellow pigment producer. And people can have types of
albinism where you're producing uh no you melanin whatsoever, but
plenty of yellow red pao melanin. So that will adjust
the different kinds of skin pigments you have. And sometimes
(17:17):
you'll see people with albinism we have like you know,
totally pale skin, but like a big shock of yellow
gold hair. They're producing plenty of phao melanin. Just no
you ma melanin. And those are the different like the
different gradiations of of albinism have to do with how
much in what type of melanin can escape out into
(17:38):
the skin, into the eyes and into the hair. Yeah,
And interestingly, birds and mammals are the only living things
that have melanostes, which are those cells that produced the melanin.
So this is why you're not going to see a
lot of bright colored mammals. Like, you're not gonna see
a lot of bright green or blue mammals. Uh. And
(17:59):
then when its to birds to but you're like, wait
a minute, why are humans you know, basically shades of
sort of brown? Uh? And why can birds be like
pink and orange and red. It's for a lot of reasons.
So we talked about some of these before. But one
of the reasons is their diet, like in the case
of the flamingo, of flamingo is white except uh for
(18:20):
their diet, which turns them red or pink. Yeah, they can. Um.
They can also produce certain kinds of chains of amino
acids that produce blue or green. They can combine some
of the pigments they produce with some structural stuff, like
in in the way that their feathers are built, to
create entirely new colors. Um. There's a lot of stuff
(18:42):
you can do, but that's typically birds. And the reason
they think that birds are so colorful is because the
visual acuity in the bird world is a little more
important even in the human world. As important as it
is for us. But there's also another thing that that
um melanin does is it can provide like structure and
toughness UM. Like if you look at the outer layer
(19:02):
of fur and like a cold um, like a cold
dwelling animal, that's usually gonna be fairly dark UM. And
one of the reasons why it's dark is because it's
also providing like structure and toughness to that that outer
layer for not just you know, UM, preventing U light
(19:23):
to get through, UV to get through, right, But then
you start scritching underneath, you get to that little baby soft,
lighter colored undercoat. Even with my dog Charlie, who's got
the longer hair, she's you know, she has an outer
coat and an undercoat, and that undercoat is different. It
feels a little different, it looks a little different. The
(19:44):
exception to that, of course, is polar bears. They're not
actually producing any kind of white pigment. I think it's
the structure of their um, their hairs, their clear hollow tubes,
so they refract light so that all of the light
comes back at you. Yeah, just google green polar bear
if you want to freak your kids out a little bit.
Oh yeah, yeah, it sounds sousical. It's kind of a
(20:08):
green polar bear. So while we're on that though we talk,
you know, I want to talk a little bit about
the um sort of social implicate implications of having Albanism.
And you know, it's interesting that it's much more common
in parts of Africa, especially in Sub Saharan Africa, but
that's also where you can find some of the most
(20:30):
uh stigma and people being ostracized, which is I don't know,
it's really kind of sad that it seems like something
that is more common might be accepted a little bit more,
but that's not really the case, is it. No, it's not.
And unfortunately the reason why is because people with Albanism
in Africa are in some parts of Africa. We've learned
(20:51):
over the years you can't just be like in Africa
because it's just so ridiculously different culturally and geographically. But
in some parts of Africa, I believe Bigeria, Um parts
of Nigeria, if you're if you have alb albinism, you
are extraordinarily valuable. I think the body of a person
(21:11):
with albinism is worth about seventy five thousand U S
dollars in in places where people are living on like
six dollars a day is for like medical research. No
oh no, no no, no, I know you're talking about for
witchcraft and sourcery. They're considered the bone. They there's lower,
there's so here's here's the problem. Um. Not only are
(21:33):
people with albinism subject to being ostracized and isolated because
they're different and they look different the people and people
not just in Africa, but in other places where education
is less prevalent and less standardized and science is less
um relied on. I guess um, there's just a lot
(21:53):
of myth and lower surrounding albinism, and so people think
that it's like contagious. So you just want to stay
away from those people because you don't want to catch it. Um.
And then all the way across the spectrum to their
bones are made of gold dust. And if you get
your hands on the cadaver of an person without albinism,
you can you can create potions and sell them to
(22:16):
people in in the wholesale market. You can. You would
pay seventy five dollars for the the corpse of a
person with albinism. And it happens like people get murdered
for their bodies because they're they have albinism, and it's
just it's it's a despicable practice and trade. But part
of it is like figuring out how to get across
(22:37):
to like these large groups and populations the science behind
all this, and that at the very least it's not
contagious and at best their their bones are not filled
with gold dust, so please stop chopping them up kind
of thing. Yeah, And as far as you know here
in the United States, if you know this is like
(22:58):
we talked about, you know, kids teasing or stay airing.
As as parents and educators, you should be armed, I
think with the barest bones of information at least to
be able to say, oh, well, you know, that is
somebody with albinism and that means their body doesn't produce
pigment and so their skin looks different than ours does.
And if your parents you can just leave it at that.
(23:18):
And that's really all you have to do. Like, if
you want to listen to this episode and get into
uh Melana sites, knock yourself out, that's parenting plus. But
at the very least you should be able to describe it.
And like I know when I was a kid and
this is not a knock on my parents. They were
both smart people and teachers. But but just scared to
death of people with albinism. No, no, but they probably
(23:40):
would not have known what to tell me. Uh. They
probably would have said, oh, that's an albi now full stop,
steer clear of them. That's contagious. No, I don't think
that either. But I just think we have a duty
these days, like to educate ourselves to the to the
lowest level of understanding other people, you know, yeah, you know.
(24:00):
That's something that I've carried with myself for many, many years,
is like people didn't explain the why to me, and
so there didn't seem to be purposed to anything. I couldn't.
I couldn't time to appreciate the things that the reasons
why we were doing things, the strategy to football, it
was just get out there and make sure that person
doesn't get past you kind of stuff, no reason why doesn't.
(24:21):
And it's like a stupid example, but it's a good
case of it that like nobody stopped and said, here's
the grand picture, here's the grand scheme of things. And
the more information I would have had, the more I
would have appreciated life and probably appreciated other people too,
So I agree with you completely. I think that that
is that is a part and parcel with making the
world a better places is providing more information. Um two
(24:43):
kids especially. Yeah, and again this is slightly tangential and soapboxy,
but I think in our day, and certainly before our
day as kids, there was a lot of just like
shut up and don't ask questions sort of attitude. Yeah,
that's a terrible thing to do. You should do is
ask questions and get questions sort. My lord, it's frustrating
the whole like because I said so kind of thing,
(25:05):
which is so prevalent when we were kids. As I understand,
it's going the way of the dinosaur, which I think
is great. It is, but boy, when you accidentally catch
yourself saying it, that's apparent you're just like, oh no,
i'll be right back. I'm gonna go flog myself. Oh
I'm sure there's plenty of parent groups just waiting to
flog you outside your door too. Yeah. The because I
(25:26):
said so crowd, Yeah yeah, they're like the Guilty Remnant,
the Leftovers. They just stand outside your house and smoke,
which were two episodes away from finishing by the way
that appens tonight. That's great man. Congratulations from from all
of the stuff you should know listeners. I just have
to say, and I knew this was the show that
got progressively better and more bonkers, but boy, what they're
(25:48):
thrown down in season three. I am all over it.
I don't believe I made it that far. What. Yeah,
and I thought you I thought you like said you
wish you could go back and do it over again. Yeah, yeah,
the first time. I don't think I realized and then
kept going after season one. Yeah, yeah, there were three seasons. Okay,
well good, I've got some sticks and I gotta reframe everything. Now.
(26:09):
I'll watch this on your recommendation. So, Chuck, I feel
like we can button this up by saying society has
a long way to go toward learning how to treat
people with albinism. Equally agreed. Yeah, but let's do that.
All right, Let's do that, and let's take a break,
and we'll talk a little bit more about what limited
amount we know about what causes this right after this
(26:39):
as watched by SKA. All right, so we're back. We
know and we've talked about this already that it's a
recessive gene that causes albinism. But it's it's like, all right,
(27:00):
so that's a recessive gene. This is like when you're
not off in biology class when I woke up. You
wake up and you go, Okay, well, I know the
answer is a recessive gene. But how does that happen? Uh?
And the secret to it all is a little protein
called tirasinase. Right, how would you pronounce it? I just
(27:21):
exactly like that taraskay, those tyros sinase. But that's how
it's spelled tyrosinas. But tarrasin is surely is the way
that you'd say, right, I think probably. So, So that's
the one that's the one that is like the the
catalyst for basically everything that comes after to create melanin. Right,
(27:43):
whether it's you melanin or phao melanin doesn't matter. Tarrasse
is like the beginning of it. And so in that
O C A one A, the type of albinism where
you just utterly lack of pigmentation altogether, tarrasinse um is
an impacted. So when your terracins is impacted, your melanin
(28:03):
production just doesn't happen. In your melano sytes and therefore
you have O C A one A albinism. That's right. Uh,
And if that happens early on, that whole chain reaction
is going to shut down, and that's when you're going
to have the complete lack of pigmentation. In the other forms,
it might affected at different stages along the way of
(28:25):
that melanin creation. So that's why you might you know,
not be totally absent of pigmentation. Yeah. And again, like
there's different slightly different processes that produce you melanin and
other processes that produce FO melanin, so um any any
one of those things. It's a very like complex intricate
production to to create melanin. And so that means that
(28:45):
there's a lot of different points where that that process
can break down. It's just I just find that extremely fascinating.
And then also one other thing I find fascinating when
you talked about um autosomal recessive traits, did you mention
that means that two parents can both have the gene
for albinism, but neither one have albinism, but they're considered
(29:09):
carriers and so they can pass it along or not
pass it along to their kids. Well, yeah, because I mean,
and I think this is something that you would often
see is two parents without albinism have a child with albinism,
and someone might just be like, well, how does that work. Well,
it's just very easy because you have to have both parents,
and if obviously these parents didn't have both of their
(29:32):
parents that had that genetic mutation, then they're not gonna
have it. But it's interesting. It's one of those things
where you sort of like the sharks sharks bumping in
the night. Did you say sharks first? I think I
did say sharks. That's a whole different problem. That's bumping
in the night. H sharks bumping in the night. It's like, uh,
(29:53):
you wouldn't know this. You probably wouldn't know this about
yourself if you only had one, if you were just carrier,
you know what I mean, right, So you probably wouldn't
find this out until you had a kid exactly. And
that was that's one reason why there's a lot of
lower and myth around um albinism in less educated areas,
like there's like a question of paternity, like this can't
(30:14):
possibly be my kid um that kind of thing. But
then on the same token too, as far as passing
it along Uh, if you have albinism and you fall
in love and reproduce with a person who doesn't have albinism,
but it also is in a carrier of albinism, your
children won't have albinism. Have both those parents. You gotta
(30:36):
have both those parents that have passed along both those things,
because again, you can have siblings that don't have albinism.
Because like I think, you have a chance of getting
albinism or of being passed along to you, you have
a fifty percent chance or seventy chance of it not
being passed along, But there's a different combination of what's
not passed along. Yeah. Yeah. What I also thought was
(30:59):
interesting was um when Ed towards the end started talking
a little bit about in the animal kingdom, and you
know the fact that it's for sure a disadvantage if
you're living in the jungle and you're an animal, because
coloration is a big part of your camouflage and survival,
blending into your natural habitat as both the predator and
(31:20):
a prey. So if you are, you know, an alligator
or a guerilla with albinism, you're definitely in a disadvantage
in the wild. Um. I don't know that it's you know,
it's definitely in the wild, because he said, if you
have like a bunch of lab rats just sort of
doing their thing, then it's really not going to affect
them much at all. But you know, we talked a
(31:42):
little bit in the Cave Dwellers episode about these organisms
and I think reptiles that live deep in these caves
that are essentially I have no pigment and in there
it doesn't really matter, and in fact, some of the
vision stuff might be an advantage. Yeah, like the fact
that you don't have pigments like bouncing light and refracting
(32:04):
it off. UM. I guess basically keeping it from bouncing
around means that you should be able to get more light,
more visual information in very low levels of light, So
that would be an advantage for sure. Yeah, I think
it's pretty interesting. It is interesting. So I guess before
we go chuck um, we should we should talk about
(32:24):
there's a lot of other um conditions that can happen
that have to do with pigmentation melanin um that really
don't have anything to do with albinism, which really kind
of goes to show you, like just how complex melanin
production actually is you know. Yeah, and we talked recently.
I don't know why, but we did mention viddle igo recently. Um,
(32:47):
this is not the same thing as albinism. This is
when you have these sort of very defined areas of
your body that have no melanin. Uh. It is similar
because it has to do with melanin, but not albinism. No.
They think that, um, there's either some sort of uh,
really bad sunburn mechanical insult, like something happened to your
(33:08):
milana sites, uh, you know, mechanically, or you might have
had like some sort of chemical reaction and that whatever
trauma happens to the milana sites, it triggers your immune
system to target them as foreign invaders. So they think
now that viduligo is some sort of autoimmune disorder. That's right.
(33:28):
What else is there? There's poliosis, which I looked and no,
it does not have anything to do with polio. They
should they miss titled this one. I think they really
did because it has nothing to do with it. But
that's the one where someone will have like just a shock,
like a little patch of white hair, just totally pigment
free hair. Yeah. I know a couple of people that
(33:49):
have that the little h like the white schwa. Sure like.
Um remember John Henson from Talk Soup. Uh, yeah, he
had the white schwa RT example of that guy living
with poliosis. That's right. Uh. Emily calls any kind of
hair thing like that a schwa. I don't know why
it makes sense. I've heard it before, but I don't
(34:10):
know what it means. I think it means exactly what
it means, right, I don't. I think she just means
what like if I poof my hair up in a
with a big like like a pompadour, she would call
that a schway. Okay, I got you. It's very I
think no one outside my household really understands what it means.
It's a tuft of hair. Yeah, it's a tough Okay.
(34:30):
I don't think I realized that's what poliosis was. Yeah,
that's that's what it is. What do you think it was?
You thought I had to do with polio, didn't you?
I totally did. Actually I did too until I confirmed. Nope,
just terribly named. There's also Wardenburg syndrome. Uh. This is
abnormality with the pigment and the hair and skin and eyes.
(34:51):
But this is a congenital disease also not have anything
to do with albinism, right, um, and I think that's
about it. There's piebald is m. You know the kind
of piebald horses where there's a big um white patch,
usually a like a large one sometimes on the chataful.
It's the type of horse. It's actually a condition um
(35:13):
that that humans can have as well. It's just that
they bred a certain type of horse. They selected it
in a certain type of horse called the piebald horse. Uh.
You know, I have a tuxedo catos. I'm kind of
curious about how that happens. I'm gonna look into that.
That's classy. Yeah, classy tuxedo cat. That's right. Well that's
(35:34):
it for albinism. Huh. That's it. If you want to
learn more about albinism, you should go out and do that.
There's a lot to learn, um. And you could do
worse than starting at um Frontiers for Kids on their
Albanism article, because it's a pretty good one, and then
just go from there. Uh. And since I said just
go from there, it's time for a listener mail. Yeah.
(35:57):
This is short and sweet. We got called out on
something and whenever we get something wrong, we certainly like
to uh and and not just a correction on a
fact or something. But when we get something wrong that
we shouldn't have gotten wrong, then we like to call
attention to it and we try and do better. Uh.
This is from Natalie from California. I wanted to start
out with saying a big fan of the show, found
(36:18):
it during lockdown and made a big difference from my
boredom level as levels while working from home. But I
was a bit disappointed guys listening to the child chillibus
kidnapping as multiple times you guys implied that not being
able to spell means that you're not smart. Uh. And
you're totally right, Natalie. I didn't even think about that,
but Uh, Natalie says, I'm an adult with dyslexia and
(36:40):
I cannot spell, but save my life, in spite of this,
I'm a highly intelligent and successful adult. Uh. And it's
fairly able us to correlate ability to spell with overall
intelligence and I expect more. And Natalie, you are totally right,
and that is on us and big apologies. We uh
did not think that one through. No, indeed, we definitely
we weren't trying to throw any shade on people with
(37:01):
dyslexia at all, of course not. But you know, it's
another thing like we all learn as we go through life,
and when you learn on the air, it can be
a little embarrassing sometimes. Just that's what we do as
a job and so we we take that. Yeah, so
was that from Natalie. Yeah, yeah, thank you for for
that one, Natalie. We appreciate it. And if you have
(37:23):
something you want to call us out on, we'll we'll
take it and you can address it to stuff podcast
at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is
a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my
heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too. So it's a
good old fashioned bout of stuff you should know. Ready
to kick you in the duff. Oh my gosh, about
(00:23):
where we a sickness? Yeah, some some would say, oh dear,
I'm ready for this one. I'm so excited because awesome,
I understand genetics and chemistry like I've never understood it
before in my life. Well, I think that a little
credit goes to our palagraphs or who has a knack
(00:44):
for explaining very complex science stuff. Uh. And we also
need to shout out, as usual when it comes to science.
A kid's website, which is in this case Frontiers for
Young Minds. That was a really good one. Yeah. They
had a pretty good breakdown on albinism. Not albinism, let's
just get that out of the way. Yeah. And I
(01:05):
also tried to find out it it doesn't seem appropriate
to say albinos. Uh. I didn't expressly see that anywhere,
but it just it seems like with the how we
refer to things these days, that that that that stands
out as something that we shouldn't do. Certainly did you
find that though I did not, I didn't um, although
(01:25):
there are all sorts of like um like pro social
sites for people with albinism all over the place. I'm
surprised we didn't run into that, but because I saw
it used. But I'm gonna err on the side of
caution and just say albinism, yeah, totally, or people with
albinism right well sure, or plants. Yeah, that's that's something
(01:50):
that came up. Like certainly you've you're familiar that you know,
not all it's not just people who can have albinism,
but that um animals can too. Every once in a
while you hear about it very rare like um uh,
like a shark with albinism or like you said, an
alligator with albinism. It's just so um stark and surprising.
One of the reasons why is because it's exceedingly rare
(02:13):
in the animal kingdom. UM. But it's still around, and
it's not just mammals that can have albinism too, although
it would make a lot more sense if it was
just mammals that got it because it affects a very
specific part of the body, the Melana sites, which we'll
talk about in great, great, great detail a little bit um.
(02:35):
But but that like, uh, like a whole cascade of
events goes from or it takes place within those Melana sites,
and any part of that can get messed up or disordered.
And those those are what are the basis of the
different types of albanism, as we'll see. Yeah, and you
know the reason that you you indicated that it was
super rare to see like a guerilla with albinism, although
(02:58):
you can see that's because and we'll get into the
genetics more specifically, but it's in autosomal recessive trait, which
means that both of your parents have to have this
Albanism gene. So, I mean, it's rare enough in humans
when two people fall in love and mate for life
and stuff like that. But when you're counting on two
(03:21):
sharks that happened to swim by, that happened to have that, uh,
express their genes that way, and they happen to, you know,
get friendly with one another, bump up against one another.
Sure rub fins, however sharks do that thing. Uh, it
makes it even more rare because you're counting on um
almost just like you know, fate or destiny, not destiny.
(03:44):
Let's not get hippie dippy about it. But you know,
a couple of guerillas getting together in the midst that
both have this genetic gene. They wait for the mist
to settle and then they're like, no one can see
I just said genetic gene too. That's just what I know.
So yeah, for whatever reason, Chuck, whether it's like because
the populations are isolated or what, but it it does
(04:04):
seem to be much rarer. Albanism does seem to be
much rare in like the wild than it is among humans.
And even in like some human populations, it's like you
could call it not rare at all. Like if you
go to some parts of Africa, UM, some parts of
central or South America, UM, you'll find you'll find groups
(04:24):
that like are fairly small genetically speaking, um and and
the and albinism has just become kind of like an
endemic trade among the population. Yeah. And I think that's
even where the first uh, the word albino was first
used in the eighteen hundreds in Africa for people that
(04:45):
had albinism. And it's I think the root is the
Latin albus or albo from Spanish, Spanish and Portuguese. That's right.
So when we're talking about albinism, I think most people
probably know what we're talking about. But um use, really,
when you see a person with albinism, they have either
totally white hair or a very light colored hair UM
(05:09):
usually UM, little to no skin pigmentation UM. Or they
can have kind of like a yellowish or pinkish skin pigmentation. UM.
They might have eyes that lack color or seem red,
which apparently has to do with the blood vessels in
the eye reflecting the red light from well back out
(05:31):
at you the viewer. But all of this has to
do with a complete in total or a greatly reduced
lack of melanin. Right. Yeah, And you know, if we're
gonna crumble a myth, we can crumble the myth that
um you are not. Like, if you have albinism and
you don't have red eyes or pink eyes, then you
(05:52):
don't have true albinism, And that's not true at all.
There are a lot of different kinds of albinism, and
depending on the way that genes express themselves, there can
be a range of of effects on your body. Uh
ed was mentioned even with the plant Kingdom with maize,
you know, there's uh you can have and it's not
(06:12):
white corn. That's a different thing altogether. But if you,
because it trusts me, if you look up albanism and corn,
the first thing you're gonna see as a corn snake.
Even if you so you have to type in maze
and then you're just gonna see white corn. But there
are a few different kinds of albinism and maze, one
of which basically is no pigment or chlorophyll, and that's
(06:33):
not even gonna survive because it's a plant, one that
will eventually become just a regular ear of corn. And
then a third type, which is really interesting. It's striped
and some parts have that pigment in some parts don't. Yeah,
And like, if you put two different types of albinism,
whether it's corn or humans together, the person who has
(06:55):
both of those different traits probably won't appear to have
albinism all because you have to have matching gene mutations
to have an autosomal recessive uh uh genetic disorder in
albi is one of those, like you said, yeah, And interestingly,
if you just sort of look at it in a vacuum.
(07:17):
Albinism isn't necessarily harmful. Uh. There can be comorbidities, and
there can be other effects that happen, of course, like
with things like sun and sunburn and sun exposure, and
there's our vision problems that can happen, and we'll get
into all this more specifically, but just by itself, albinism
isn't necessarily harmful to a person or a population, right,
(07:41):
And there's different types to their syndromic and non syndromic,
and syndromic means that you usually have other related health issues,
and there are syndromic types of albinism. But one of
the things that tends to UM tends to go along
with albinism, along with the lack of skin and hair
or pigmentation UM is vision problems, which we'll talk about,
(08:05):
but there's other stuff too. There's they've correlated UM autism
with albinism, which I couldn't find a lot on, but
it maybe wonder there's also a correlation between vision um
problems and autism, and it's possible, they theorize because no
one knows at this point what the correlation is, but
they theorized that UM has to do with a low
(08:26):
level of visual input leading to autism. So it's possible
that if you have a low level of visual input
because of albinism, that could lead to autism as well, potentially. Right,
so much we don't know, but we do know that
it is albinism is a neural crest disorder. And this
basically means, I mean, we can get as as wonky
(08:49):
here science wise as you want to, but the easy
version is it means that it's very early in embryonic development, uh,
when a group of cells is folding into a crest,
and at this point, if something is going on with
those cells, it can affect a lot of different things
moving forward, including albinism. Right, Because those neural crests, when
they form the extremely early embryonic stage, they form um cartilage, bone, skin,
(09:16):
smooth muscle, cells, neurons, They differentiate into a bunch of
different stuff. But the point of that is is that
like you're the gene that is responsible for whatever type
of albinism you have, um like differentiated like really early on,
long before many other genes were active. It also it
also points out, Chuck, I think, um, something that's that's
(09:39):
worth mentioning that at this point because it's a genetic disorder,
and apparently in extraordinarily early in development genetic disorder. Um,
there's no treatment for albinism. Everything treating is just to
take care of the the symptoms that come along with it.
I think that's a good overviewed to get us going.
Don't you think so too. Yeah, let's let's take a break.
(10:01):
I smell a break. Yeah. Well, in fact, I could
just be done and we could just run a bunch
of ads if you want to do it that way.
I don't think everybody would like that. I think they'd
rather hear is muddle through albinism. All right, we'll do
a couple of messages from our sponsors and we'll be
right back as watch skul So, when most people think
(10:37):
of albinism, chuck Um, what they're actually thinking of is
a specific type called oculo cutaneous albinism or O c A,
which is the most prevalent form, but it's also the
most distinct form as well. Yeah, and this is you know,
if you've ever seen the musician Johnny Winner or or
Edgar Winner or uh, you know a lot of times
(10:59):
people with alba is m will be cast in movies unfairly.
A lot of times it's it's the bad guy because
they have a unique look. Uh, and you know, it's
Hollywood and that's kind of what they do exactly. And
we'll get into that later on too. But um, it's
funny though. I did see a couple of videos where
people with albinism sat and watched movie characters of people
(11:23):
with albinism and basically just sort of made fun of it.
They're just like, Okay, another bad guy. That's a surprise.
But that's exactly that's what you're talking about. It. That's
o c A. One is when you're talking about maybe
someone with the pink or red eyes, the lack of pigment,
the skin, that white white hair, right, um, and that one.
(11:44):
So there's supposedly there's somewhere between four and maybe even
nine different forms, but most scientists who study albinism recognize
maybe four to five different forms. The rest of them are, um,
these really really almost ex oddic rare mutations that have
occurred in these really isolated communities where albinism is actually
(12:06):
common enough that it just is mutating in a new form.
So most people say four to five forms. Um, And
if you're like the easygoing type, you just call it
type one type two. If you're high strung like me,
you probably call the most common one O C A
one A. There's also O C A one B, O
C A two, O C A UM three and four
(12:27):
and so on, actually not so on. That's that's all
of them. But the thing that all of these are,
at least most of them sharing common is that there's
either a total or complete lack of pigmentation. And then
again it affects the eyes because it's that ocular cutaneous albinism.
And so with this lack of pigmentation, that one, uh,
(12:51):
that's that most people think of when they think of albinism.
O C A one A there's like no pigmentation whatsoever.
And everybody with albinism has those those pigment forming cells
melana sites. It's just the for different reasons, those melano
sites are not producing pigments to varying degrees, and in
(13:12):
O C A one eight they're not producing pigment at all. Right, So,
like you kind of said at the beginning, if you
see someone that has the red or pinkish eyes, it's
those are the blood vessels that you're saying. Because of
the lack of pigment, and that's what's also going to
lead to those vision problems. Uh. Like you kind of
hinted at it. You know, a lot more light is
going to be entering your eye that's not being absorbed
(13:35):
like it would if you have pigment in your eye.
It's not being diffracted. Uh at the very least, if
you have albinism, you're probably gonna be really sensitive delight. Um.
But it can also actually damage the retina as well, right,
which is a big one. Um. As we'll see, that's
a it's a huge problem that the idea that um
it's called photophobia, like deep sensitivity to light. Yeah. Um.
(13:58):
And then also you you just can't see as well,
um like you can in that in turn can lead
to problems with learning in high school drops. It's like
a cascading effect that all just chickins with not enough
pigment in the eye. It's really astounding with just something
that seems kind of small has like the impacts that
it has. Yeah. And you know the great thing about
(14:18):
most schools systems these days is they make great efforts
for any kind of uh kid in school that has
any sort of a challenge to say like, all right,
well we have something to accommodate for that now. But
it you know, it's taken a long time to get
to this point and we still have a long way
to go. But you know, you can't imagine somebody with
albinism in the nineteen you know, thirties, forties, fifties, sixties, seventies,
(14:43):
and what schooling must have been like when it was
basically just like sorry, you know, you can't you obviously
can't keep up. You're struggling to learn to read, and
we don't quite know what to do with that, right
and there, and and they always punctuated with him. And
by the way, everything your classmates are saying about you
is true. Hopefully teachers are at least kind about it
(15:07):
even back then. Maybe, but kids are always mean. Yeah,
for sure. They're getting nicer, though, are they. That's great, man,
that's a huge improvement. Well, they are, but it's um,
I mean, obviously they're still bullying and a lot of
problems with that stuff. But the kids are getting better
because it's I think we've proven as parents and educators
that that can be taught, that you start them at
(15:28):
a young age teaching about facial differences. Or just any
kind of differences and that you know that we're all
the same. Uh. You know, it sounds very free to
be you and me, but we're all the same on
the inside. And so that kind of like teaching that
stuff actually works. That's why it's frustrating when people push
back on that kind of thing. Yeah, I don't want
Mike could be nice. You can't make my kid be nice.
(15:50):
It's a First Amendment issue. That was just a little
soapox moment for me. I like it. I put one
foot up on there with you too, Thank you so
um so there's room for you in eat chuck. Yeah,
Jerry's always up here. Of course she won't stop. It's
a little much if you ask me, so, chuck. Before
we keep moving on, because I think we need to
(16:11):
talk about that social aspect of albinism now. Um but
but before we hit that, I want to say, there's
one other thing that one of the big differentiators about
between the different types of albinism is, like we were saying,
at what point in the process of creating melanin that
the pigmentation um is disrupted, means that you could actually
(16:36):
produce some levels of pigment or some different types of pigment. Like,
we have a couple of types of pigment that we
produce us humans. You melanin, that's one. That's the money melanin.
Everybody thinks about its like it produces like the browns
and everything like that. It gives you your tan if
you have brown or dark hair, that's all you melanin.
(16:56):
But there's also fail melanin, which is kind of a
red yellow pigment producer. And people can have types of
albinism where you're producing uh no you melanin whatsoever, but
plenty of yellow red pao melanin. So that will adjust
the different kinds of skin pigments you have. And sometimes
(17:17):
you'll see people with albinism we have like you know,
totally pale skin, but like a big shock of yellow
gold hair. They're producing plenty of phao melanin. Just no
you ma melanin. And those are the different like the
different gradiations of of albinism have to do with how
much in what type of melanin can escape out into
(17:38):
the skin, into the eyes and into the hair. Yeah,
And interestingly, birds and mammals are the only living things
that have melanostes, which are those cells that produced the melanin.
So this is why you're not going to see a
lot of bright colored mammals. Like, you're not gonna see
a lot of bright green or blue mammals. Uh. And
(17:59):
then when its to birds to but you're like, wait
a minute, why are humans you know, basically shades of
sort of brown? Uh? And why can birds be like
pink and orange and red. It's for a lot of reasons.
So we talked about some of these before. But one
of the reasons is their diet, like in the case
of the flamingo, of flamingo is white except uh for
(18:20):
their diet, which turns them red or pink. Yeah, they can. Um.
They can also produce certain kinds of chains of amino
acids that produce blue or green. They can combine some
of the pigments they produce with some structural stuff, like
in in the way that their feathers are built, to
create entirely new colors. Um. There's a lot of stuff
(18:42):
you can do, but that's typically birds. And the reason
they think that birds are so colorful is because the
visual acuity in the bird world is a little more
important even in the human world. As important as it
is for us. But there's also another thing that that
um melanin does is it can provide like structure and
toughness UM. Like if you look at the outer layer
(19:02):
of fur and like a cold um, like a cold
dwelling animal, that's usually gonna be fairly dark UM. And
one of the reasons why it's dark is because it's
also providing like structure and toughness to that that outer
layer for not just you know, UM, preventing U light
(19:23):
to get through, UV to get through, right, But then
you start scritching underneath, you get to that little baby soft,
lighter colored undercoat. Even with my dog Charlie, who's got
the longer hair, she's you know, she has an outer
coat and an undercoat, and that undercoat is different. It
feels a little different, it looks a little different. The
(19:44):
exception to that, of course, is polar bears. They're not
actually producing any kind of white pigment. I think it's
the structure of their um, their hairs, their clear hollow tubes,
so they refract light so that all of the light
comes back at you. Yeah, just google green polar bear
if you want to freak your kids out a little bit.
Oh yeah, yeah, it sounds sousical. It's kind of a
(20:08):
green polar bear. So while we're on that though we talk,
you know, I want to talk a little bit about
the um sort of social implicate implications of having Albanism.
And you know, it's interesting that it's much more common
in parts of Africa, especially in Sub Saharan Africa, but
that's also where you can find some of the most
(20:30):
uh stigma and people being ostracized, which is I don't know,
it's really kind of sad that it seems like something
that is more common might be accepted a little bit more,
but that's not really the case, is it. No, it's not.
And unfortunately the reason why is because people with Albanism
in Africa are in some parts of Africa. We've learned
(20:51):
over the years you can't just be like in Africa
because it's just so ridiculously different culturally and geographically. But
in some parts of Africa, I believe Bigeria, Um parts
of Nigeria, if you're if you have alb albinism, you
are extraordinarily valuable. I think the body of a person
(21:11):
with albinism is worth about seventy five thousand U S
dollars in in places where people are living on like
six dollars a day is for like medical research. No
oh no, no no, no, I know you're talking about for
witchcraft and sourcery. They're considered the bone. They there's lower,
there's so here's here's the problem. Um. Not only are
(21:33):
people with albinism subject to being ostracized and isolated because
they're different and they look different the people and people
not just in Africa, but in other places where education
is less prevalent and less standardized and science is less
um relied on. I guess um, there's just a lot
(21:53):
of myth and lower surrounding albinism, and so people think
that it's like contagious. So you just want to stay
away from those people because you don't want to catch it. Um.
And then all the way across the spectrum to their
bones are made of gold dust. And if you get
your hands on the cadaver of an person without albinism,
you can you can create potions and sell them to
(22:16):
people in in the wholesale market. You can. You would
pay seventy five dollars for the the corpse of a
person with albinism. And it happens like people get murdered
for their bodies because they're they have albinism, and it's
just it's it's a despicable practice and trade. But part
of it is like figuring out how to get across
(22:37):
to like these large groups and populations the science behind
all this, and that at the very least it's not
contagious and at best their their bones are not filled
with gold dust, so please stop chopping them up kind
of thing. Yeah, And as far as you know here
in the United States, if you know this is like
(22:58):
we talked about, you know, kids teasing or stay airing.
As as parents and educators, you should be armed, I
think with the barest bones of information at least to
be able to say, oh, well, you know, that is
somebody with albinism and that means their body doesn't produce
pigment and so their skin looks different than ours does.
And if your parents you can just leave it at that.
(23:18):
And that's really all you have to do. Like, if
you want to listen to this episode and get into
uh Melana sites, knock yourself out, that's parenting plus. But
at the very least you should be able to describe it.
And like I know when I was a kid and
this is not a knock on my parents. They were
both smart people and teachers. But but just scared to
death of people with albinism. No, no, but they probably
(23:40):
would not have known what to tell me. Uh. They
probably would have said, oh, that's an albi now full stop,
steer clear of them. That's contagious. No, I don't think
that either. But I just think we have a duty
these days, like to educate ourselves to the to the
lowest level of understanding other people, you know, yeah, you know.
(24:00):
That's something that I've carried with myself for many, many years,
is like people didn't explain the why to me, and
so there didn't seem to be purposed to anything. I couldn't.
I couldn't time to appreciate the things that the reasons
why we were doing things, the strategy to football, it
was just get out there and make sure that person
doesn't get past you kind of stuff, no reason why doesn't.
(24:21):
And it's like a stupid example, but it's a good
case of it that like nobody stopped and said, here's
the grand picture, here's the grand scheme of things. And
the more information I would have had, the more I
would have appreciated life and probably appreciated other people too,
So I agree with you completely. I think that that
is that is a part and parcel with making the
world a better places is providing more information. Um two
(24:43):
kids especially. Yeah, and again this is slightly tangential and soapboxy,
but I think in our day, and certainly before our
day as kids, there was a lot of just like
shut up and don't ask questions sort of attitude. Yeah,
that's a terrible thing to do. You should do is
ask questions and get questions sort. My lord, it's frustrating
the whole like because I said so kind of thing,
(25:05):
which is so prevalent when we were kids. As I understand,
it's going the way of the dinosaur, which I think
is great. It is, but boy, when you accidentally catch
yourself saying it, that's apparent you're just like, oh no,
i'll be right back. I'm gonna go flog myself. Oh
I'm sure there's plenty of parent groups just waiting to
flog you outside your door too. Yeah. The because I
(25:26):
said so crowd, Yeah yeah, they're like the Guilty Remnant,
the Leftovers. They just stand outside your house and smoke,
which were two episodes away from finishing by the way
that appens tonight. That's great man. Congratulations from from all
of the stuff you should know listeners. I just have
to say, and I knew this was the show that
got progressively better and more bonkers, but boy, what they're
(25:48):
thrown down in season three. I am all over it.
I don't believe I made it that far. What. Yeah,
and I thought you I thought you like said you
wish you could go back and do it over again. Yeah, yeah,
the first time. I don't think I realized and then
kept going after season one. Yeah, yeah, there were three seasons. Okay,
well good, I've got some sticks and I gotta reframe everything. Now.
(26:09):
I'll watch this on your recommendation. So, Chuck, I feel
like we can button this up by saying society has
a long way to go toward learning how to treat
people with albinism. Equally agreed. Yeah, but let's do that.
All right, Let's do that, and let's take a break,
and we'll talk a little bit more about what limited
amount we know about what causes this right after this
(26:39):
as watched by SKA. All right, so we're back. We
know and we've talked about this already that it's a
recessive gene that causes albinism. But it's it's like, all right,
(27:00):
so that's a recessive gene. This is like when you're
not off in biology class when I woke up. You
wake up and you go, Okay, well, I know the
answer is a recessive gene. But how does that happen? Uh?
And the secret to it all is a little protein
called tirasinase. Right, how would you pronounce it? I just
(27:21):
exactly like that taraskay, those tyros sinase. But that's how
it's spelled tyrosinas. But tarrasin is surely is the way
that you'd say, right, I think probably. So, So that's
the one that's the one that is like the the
catalyst for basically everything that comes after to create melanin. Right,
(27:43):
whether it's you melanin or phao melanin doesn't matter. Tarrasse
is like the beginning of it. And so in that
O C A one A, the type of albinism where
you just utterly lack of pigmentation altogether, tarrasinse um is
an impacted. So when your terracins is impacted, your melanin
(28:03):
production just doesn't happen. In your melano sytes and therefore
you have O C A one A albinism. That's right. Uh,
And if that happens early on, that whole chain reaction
is going to shut down, and that's when you're going
to have the complete lack of pigmentation. In the other forms,
it might affected at different stages along the way of
(28:25):
that melanin creation. So that's why you might you know,
not be totally absent of pigmentation. Yeah. And again, like
there's different slightly different processes that produce you melanin and
other processes that produce FO melanin, so um any any
one of those things. It's a very like complex intricate
production to to create melanin. And so that means that
(28:45):
there's a lot of different points where that that process
can break down. It's just I just find that extremely fascinating.
And then also one other thing I find fascinating when
you talked about um autosomal recessive traits, did you mention
that means that two parents can both have the gene
for albinism, but neither one have albinism, but they're considered
(29:09):
carriers and so they can pass it along or not
pass it along to their kids. Well, yeah, because I mean,
and I think this is something that you would often
see is two parents without albinism have a child with albinism,
and someone might just be like, well, how does that work. Well,
it's just very easy because you have to have both parents,
and if obviously these parents didn't have both of their
(29:32):
parents that had that genetic mutation, then they're not gonna
have it. But it's interesting. It's one of those things
where you sort of like the sharks sharks bumping in
the night. Did you say sharks first? I think I
did say sharks. That's a whole different problem. That's bumping
in the night. H sharks bumping in the night. It's like, uh,
(29:53):
you wouldn't know this. You probably wouldn't know this about
yourself if you only had one, if you were just carrier,
you know what I mean, right, So you probably wouldn't
find this out until you had a kid exactly. And
that was that's one reason why there's a lot of
lower and myth around um albinism in less educated areas,
like there's like a question of paternity, like this can't
(30:14):
possibly be my kid um that kind of thing. But
then on the same token too, as far as passing
it along Uh, if you have albinism and you fall
in love and reproduce with a person who doesn't have albinism,
but it also is in a carrier of albinism, your
children won't have albinism. Have both those parents. You gotta
(30:36):
have both those parents that have passed along both those things,
because again, you can have siblings that don't have albinism.
Because like I think, you have a chance of getting
albinism or of being passed along to you, you have
a fifty percent chance or seventy chance of it not
being passed along, But there's a different combination of what's
not passed along. Yeah. Yeah. What I also thought was
(30:59):
interesting was um when Ed towards the end started talking
a little bit about in the animal kingdom, and you
know the fact that it's for sure a disadvantage if
you're living in the jungle and you're an animal, because
coloration is a big part of your camouflage and survival,
blending into your natural habitat as both the predator and
(31:20):
a prey. So if you are, you know, an alligator
or a guerilla with albinism, you're definitely in a disadvantage
in the wild. Um. I don't know that it's you know,
it's definitely in the wild, because he said, if you
have like a bunch of lab rats just sort of
doing their thing, then it's really not going to affect
them much at all. But you know, we talked a
(31:42):
little bit in the Cave Dwellers episode about these organisms
and I think reptiles that live deep in these caves
that are essentially I have no pigment and in there
it doesn't really matter, and in fact, some of the
vision stuff might be an advantage. Yeah, like the fact
that you don't have pigments like bouncing light and refracting
(32:04):
it off. UM. I guess basically keeping it from bouncing
around means that you should be able to get more light,
more visual information in very low levels of light, So
that would be an advantage for sure. Yeah, I think
it's pretty interesting. It is interesting. So I guess before
we go chuck um, we should we should talk about
(32:24):
there's a lot of other um conditions that can happen
that have to do with pigmentation melanin um that really
don't have anything to do with albinism, which really kind
of goes to show you, like just how complex melanin
production actually is you know. Yeah, and we talked recently.
I don't know why, but we did mention viddle igo recently. Um,
(32:47):
this is not the same thing as albinism. This is
when you have these sort of very defined areas of
your body that have no melanin. Uh. It is similar
because it has to do with melanin, but not albinism. No.
They think that, um, there's either some sort of uh,
really bad sunburn mechanical insult, like something happened to your
(33:08):
milana sites, uh, you know, mechanically, or you might have
had like some sort of chemical reaction and that whatever
trauma happens to the milana sites, it triggers your immune
system to target them as foreign invaders. So they think
now that viduligo is some sort of autoimmune disorder. That's right.
(33:28):
What else is there? There's poliosis, which I looked and no,
it does not have anything to do with polio. They
should they miss titled this one. I think they really
did because it has nothing to do with it. But
that's the one where someone will have like just a shock,
like a little patch of white hair, just totally pigment
free hair. Yeah. I know a couple of people that
(33:49):
have that the little h like the white schwa. Sure like.
Um remember John Henson from Talk Soup. Uh, yeah, he
had the white schwa RT example of that guy living
with poliosis. That's right. Uh. Emily calls any kind of
hair thing like that a schwa. I don't know why
it makes sense. I've heard it before, but I don't
(34:10):
know what it means. I think it means exactly what
it means, right, I don't. I think she just means
what like if I poof my hair up in a
with a big like like a pompadour, she would call
that a schway. Okay, I got you. It's very I
think no one outside my household really understands what it means.
It's a tuft of hair. Yeah, it's a tough Okay.
(34:30):
I don't think I realized that's what poliosis was. Yeah,
that's that's what it is. What do you think it was?
You thought I had to do with polio, didn't you?
I totally did. Actually I did too until I confirmed. Nope,
just terribly named. There's also Wardenburg syndrome. Uh. This is
abnormality with the pigment and the hair and skin and eyes.
(34:51):
But this is a congenital disease also not have anything
to do with albinism, right, um, and I think that's
about it. There's piebald is m. You know the kind
of piebald horses where there's a big um white patch,
usually a like a large one sometimes on the chataful.
It's the type of horse. It's actually a condition um
(35:13):
that that humans can have as well. It's just that
they bred a certain type of horse. They selected it
in a certain type of horse called the piebald horse. Uh.
You know, I have a tuxedo catos. I'm kind of
curious about how that happens. I'm gonna look into that.
That's classy. Yeah, classy tuxedo cat. That's right. Well that's
(35:34):
it for albinism. Huh. That's it. If you want to
learn more about albinism, you should go out and do that.
There's a lot to learn, um. And you could do
worse than starting at um Frontiers for Kids on their
Albanism article, because it's a pretty good one, and then
just go from there. Uh. And since I said just
go from there, it's time for a listener mail. Yeah.
(35:57):
This is short and sweet. We got called out on
something and whenever we get something wrong, we certainly like
to uh and and not just a correction on a
fact or something. But when we get something wrong that
we shouldn't have gotten wrong, then we like to call
attention to it and we try and do better. Uh.
This is from Natalie from California. I wanted to start
out with saying a big fan of the show, found
(36:18):
it during lockdown and made a big difference from my
boredom level as levels while working from home. But I
was a bit disappointed guys listening to the child chillibus
kidnapping as multiple times you guys implied that not being
able to spell means that you're not smart. Uh. And
you're totally right, Natalie. I didn't even think about that,
but Uh, Natalie says, I'm an adult with dyslexia and
(36:40):
I cannot spell, but save my life, in spite of this,
I'm a highly intelligent and successful adult. Uh. And it's
fairly able us to correlate ability to spell with overall
intelligence and I expect more. And Natalie, you are totally right,
and that is on us and big apologies. We uh
did not think that one through. No, indeed, we definitely
we weren't trying to throw any shade on people with
(37:01):
dyslexia at all, of course not. But you know, it's
another thing like we all learn as we go through life,
and when you learn on the air, it can be
a little embarrassing sometimes. Just that's what we do as
a job and so we we take that. Yeah, so
was that from Natalie. Yeah, yeah, thank you for for
that one, Natalie. We appreciate it. And if you have
(37:23):
something you want to call us out on, we'll we'll
take it and you can address it to stuff podcast
at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is
a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my
heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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