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SYSK Selects: How HeLa Cells Work · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: M Hey, everybody, This is Chuck and welcome to this
0:03
Speaker 1: week's Saturday Stuff You Should Know Selects episode. Uh. This
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Speaker 1: week was my pick, and I picked the episode on
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Speaker 1: the HeLa Cells because I think this one had a
0:12
Speaker 1: great mix of history and science. History episodes are some
0:18
Speaker 1: of my favorites, and we got to tell a little
0:20
Speaker 1: bit of the story of the great Henrietta Lacks and
0:23
Speaker 1: um on the science end, we got to kind of
0:25
Speaker 1: delve into the importance of HeLa cells. So I hope
0:28
Speaker 1: you enjoy it this time around. If you've heard it before,
0:31
Speaker 1: give it another listen. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know
0:41
Speaker 1: from House Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
0:49
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and Charles W. Chuck Bryant's
0:52
Speaker 1: with me, and Cherry's with me, and that means that
0:54
Speaker 1: the three of us all together make it s w
0:56
Speaker 1: Should Know. Hey, man, Hey, you can see it good?
0:59
Speaker 1: You see? So I'm pretty excited about this one. Actually,
1:03
Speaker 1: oh yeah, it's been a long time coming. We have
1:06
Speaker 1: tons of people email us about this book. This lady
1:09
Speaker 1: in read a lax and her helok felt HeLa Heila,
1:15
Speaker 1: it's Henrietta Lacks. It's probably a laugh I hear that,
1:19
Speaker 1: but I think it's Heila and Helos probably the way
1:21
Speaker 1: to go. We'll go, well, we'll just do our own thing, okay. Um,
1:25
Speaker 1: but yeah, this has been like a really big fan
1:27
Speaker 1: request over the years. Yeah, but it ties in. We
1:29
Speaker 1: did a show on right do you own your We
1:34
Speaker 1: have a right to privacy after you die? Yeah, and
1:36
Speaker 1: I think that's when we got the most feedback about this. Yeah,
1:38
Speaker 1: for sure, it ties in heavily. It definitely ties in heavily.
1:41
Speaker 1: There's a big movement about basically respecting the dead, you know,
1:45
Speaker 1: whether you're a an ancient mummy or a woman from
1:50
Speaker 1: Baltimore and the who died in the fifties, Like how
1:53
Speaker 1: much of an expectation of privacy and how much of
1:55
Speaker 1: a right to what makes you you? Do you have
1:59
Speaker 1: after you die? And the plight of Henrietta lacks Um
2:04
Speaker 1: has definitely raised this national discussion about it, and you know, great,
2:11
Speaker 1: I guess it is the only way to put it, Like,
2:13
Speaker 1: it's really good that people are talking about this. And
2:16
Speaker 1: it's not just privacy. There's also um a lot of
2:19
Speaker 1: allegations of racism, profiteering. It's a really morally complicated story,
2:24
Speaker 1: but a pretty interesting one too, because at the end
2:27
Speaker 1: of the day, this lady has done more to further
2:31
Speaker 1: science been possibly any one person on the planet. Yeah,
2:38
Speaker 1: Jonah Sauk, you say he is he la cells? Yeah?
2:43
Speaker 1: Is that gonna bug you every time I say that? No,
2:45
Speaker 1: it's fun. Okay. I I've adjusted my brain so I
2:49
Speaker 1: hear it the way that I want to now, So
2:52
Speaker 1: go ahead, great. Uh, what we're talking about are the
2:56
Speaker 1: cells of a woman, an African American woman named Henrietta
2:59
Speaker 1: Lacks who in uh in Baltimore, Maryland. She was pregnant
3:06
Speaker 1: with her fifth child and she felt what she described
3:10
Speaker 1: as a not to her family inside her midsection, and
3:15
Speaker 1: after childbirth, it was discovered that she had a lump
3:18
Speaker 1: on her cervix and had cervical cancer about a year
3:22
Speaker 1: after she gave birth. Yeah, and um, the only place
3:25
Speaker 1: that would treat African Americans at the time in that
3:28
Speaker 1: area was JOHNS Hopkins in Baltimore, which is sad in
3:31
Speaker 1: its own right. So, uh, while she was sick and
3:36
Speaker 1: being treated, one of her doctor's doctor, how are you
3:40
Speaker 1: going to pronounce this? Is it gay or gay? Gay? Gay?
3:43
Speaker 1: He was in her doctor he was he ran the
3:45
Speaker 1: tissue culture lab. Yeah, but he um, they sent part
3:49
Speaker 1: of her service away to a lab to get tested,
3:54
Speaker 1: and it turns out that it was pretty remarkable in
3:56
Speaker 1: the way that her cells divided. Yeah. Yeah, you gotta
4:00
Speaker 1: understand this guy, Dr Gay. It's g g e y.
4:03
Speaker 1: I would say gay gay? Is that what you were saying?
4:08
Speaker 1: It could be g I just gonna call him Dr Gay.
4:11
Speaker 1: Isn't everyone named Clark's so easy? Yeah? I'm boring though.
4:17
Speaker 1: Um So, Dr Gay is basically this guy who he
4:21
Speaker 1: his wife and an assistant run this tissue culture laboratory
4:24
Speaker 1: at Johns Hopkins. And for literally decades, this man has
4:30
Speaker 1: been trying to find a line of human cells that
4:34
Speaker 1: will continue to reproduce and not just die when placed
4:38
Speaker 1: in culture. One day he got a sample of some
4:42
Speaker 1: cells taken from the tumor in Henrietta Lacks's cervix, and
4:47
Speaker 1: he put them in culture and they started to divide.
4:51
Speaker 1: And they divided again after that, and they divided again
4:53
Speaker 1: after that. In every twenty four hours, the population of
4:56
Speaker 1: soul cells and culture divided doubled. And this guy said,
5:02
Speaker 1: Holy cow, this is it, Like, this is the first
5:05
Speaker 1: time I've seen a line of immortal human cells. This
5:08
Speaker 1: could advance science forever. By this time, I think henri
5:12
Speaker 1: Alax was dead because was it a biopsy or was
5:15
Speaker 1: it from her autopsy? Do you know it was from
5:18
Speaker 1: the biopsy? But um, she passed away on October fourth, nine,
5:24
Speaker 1: and I think all of this happened postmortem, and we
5:27
Speaker 1: should like, I don't in any way want to diminish
5:30
Speaker 1: what happened in between the time of her biopsy and
5:32
Speaker 1: the time doctor gaze like eureka, like this woman had um.
5:37
Speaker 1: She she got treatment, UM, but I mean the treatment
5:40
Speaker 1: at the time was fairly primitive. Apparently radiation treatment meant
5:44
Speaker 1: that you, um, you sewed little radioactive tubes into the
5:51
Speaker 1: cervix and left them there. That was radiation treatment. There
5:55
Speaker 1: was X ray treatment. She was in a tremendous amount
5:57
Speaker 1: of pain. Um, and she she died horribly from this
6:01
Speaker 1: extremely aggressive case of cervical cancer. At the time UM,
6:07
Speaker 1: and she died in her family was poverty stricken. Uh.
6:11
Speaker 1: They a lot of them didn't grow up to be
6:14
Speaker 1: very well educated. And by the time this rolled around,
6:19
Speaker 1: the the public awareness of Henriett Alacks's plight or post death, UM,
6:26
Speaker 1: her family couldn't even afford healthcare for the most part,
6:29
Speaker 1: which is a great irony of this whole thing. So
6:32
Speaker 1: let's let's talk about what what happened after she died
6:34
Speaker 1: in her m her cells continued on. Well, he named them,
6:38
Speaker 1: first of all, and it's it's a common thing to
6:40
Speaker 1: name the cells after the person from which they came,
6:44
Speaker 1: and so a lot for many years people I thought
6:48
Speaker 1: they said it was a lady named Helen Lane or
6:50
Speaker 1: Helen Larson, right, because they're trying to create anonymity, like
6:54
Speaker 1: you're trying to protect the donors identity, and they were
6:58
Speaker 1: actually trying to throw pull off by saying they were
7:01
Speaker 1: lying it was Helen Lane or Helen Larson. Yeah, I
7:04
Speaker 1: don't know about that. And on an anonymity, why would
7:07
Speaker 1: they name them after the person? Then? I don't know.
7:09
Speaker 1: I think that they're trying to protect their their name.
7:12
Speaker 1: Why would they name them after I think rather than
7:14
Speaker 1: calling it at the time that Henrietta lacks cells, HELO
7:18
Speaker 1: was good enough. Interesting. I would think if you're trying
7:20
Speaker 1: to protect them, you wouldn't call it anything remotely close
7:23
Speaker 1: to the right exactly. Well that's what they do now, Okay. Um,
7:27
Speaker 1: So anyway, people didn't really check a lot because it's
7:30
Speaker 1: just no one really cares that much in the medical community,
7:33
Speaker 1: like who did these come from? It was really common
7:37
Speaker 1: at the time and still to take tissue samples and
7:40
Speaker 1: use them without consent. And that's one of the big
7:44
Speaker 1: issues that came about later is she never knew that
7:47
Speaker 1: her cells were going to be used in this way. Right.
7:49
Speaker 1: Not only did she not know, her family had no
7:51
Speaker 1: idea too. Yeah, but we should point out it wasn't
7:54
Speaker 1: like against the law or anything, and there was nothing
7:56
Speaker 1: shady going on because it was commonplace. Right. We should
8:00
Speaker 1: also point out that Dr gay I never sought to
8:02
Speaker 1: profit from these things. Now, he would send them off
8:05
Speaker 1: to people for free. Um, you have to buy them
8:08
Speaker 1: now of course. Uh. And they're all different kinds of
8:11
Speaker 1: strains that range in prices from two fifty bucks to
8:15
Speaker 1: like thousands of dollars for example. Yeah, and we'll we'll
8:18
Speaker 1: talk about that in a little while, and like you
8:21
Speaker 1: can get online and buy them. Yeah, right, I went
8:23
Speaker 1: today and I added some to the cart, and then
8:25
Speaker 1: I was like, I'm just kidding, did you that car
8:29
Speaker 1: is like Bryant? Yeah. I just was curious, so how
8:32
Speaker 1: easy it would be, And I don't know if there
8:34
Speaker 1: was a something later on in that process that I
8:36
Speaker 1: would have to fill out or something, but I added
8:40
Speaker 1: it to the cart. Uh. No, I don't think you
8:42
Speaker 1: have to fill anything out to get human culture. Really. Yeah,
8:45
Speaker 1: you don't have to prove that you're like a researcher
8:48
Speaker 1: or some kind. I don't think so. No, as long
8:50
Speaker 1: as it's not like, um, a bio hazard, I think interesting.
8:53
Speaker 1: And I know some places that charge it different prices
8:56
Speaker 1: for nonprofits as well for the Yeah, but just that
9:00
Speaker 1: much of a discount, Like I saw somewhere, it would
9:02
Speaker 1: be like maybe you or I would pay two fifty bucks,
9:05
Speaker 1: but if we had, if we were a five O
9:06
Speaker 1: one C three, we'd pay like a hundred ninety. That's
9:10
Speaker 1: not bad sixty. Yeah, I just thought it'd be more. Okay,
9:15
Speaker 1: all right, so let's talk a little bit about why. Well,
9:18
Speaker 1: first of all, we don't really know for sure why
9:20
Speaker 1: herselves were so unique. Okay, so they think they might
9:23
Speaker 1: have figured it out. I saw that in nature, Yes
9:26
Speaker 1: I didn't. I don't know. I don't know. If I
9:29
Speaker 1: thought that was solid, you didn't buy it. Well, I
9:32
Speaker 1: don't think they even went on record saying it's super solid.
9:34
Speaker 1: It's just a theory. So I from from what I
9:37
Speaker 1: understand the what's her name, Rebecca Sclute? Yeah, she's who
9:41
Speaker 1: wrote the book The Immortal Henry at a Las, Yes,
9:44
Speaker 1: which is being options by Oprah Yeah for HBO. Yeah,
9:48
Speaker 1: that would be a good one for a movie. Um.
9:52
Speaker 1: So she apparently buys it. And because she was saying
9:56
Speaker 1: that for many many years after the book came out,
9:58
Speaker 1: well for a couple of years after a book came out,
10:00
Speaker 1: because it came out in two thousand and ten, and
10:02
Speaker 1: this explanation came out this year. Um that they had
10:06
Speaker 1: to tell people on book tour, like, we have no
10:08
Speaker 1: idea why herself kept growing and growing and now we
10:11
Speaker 1: have a better understanding. But the explanation, Chuck and I
10:14
Speaker 1: are referring to everybody. Um, so you get cervical cancer
10:19
Speaker 1: from the human pepioma virus. There's two else, so it's
10:22
Speaker 1: b O right, Okay, HPV and UM apparently, which is
10:27
Speaker 1: very common by the way, Yes, um, but that's what
10:31
Speaker 1: cervical cancer comes from Florida, I understand right. Okay, So
10:36
Speaker 1: the HPV and Henrietta Lacks had insinuated its own genetic
10:42
Speaker 1: material into her DNA right above a gene called mike
10:47
Speaker 1: m YC and this gene, it's a regulatory gene, so
10:52
Speaker 1: when it starts to when it's expression starts to get
10:55
Speaker 1: hay wire, it can lead to cancer. So they think
10:59
Speaker 1: that the placement of this HPV is what causes these
11:04
Speaker 1: cells to grow and divide so quickly and so robustly,
11:09
Speaker 1: because these HeLa cells are an immortal line of cells.
11:14
Speaker 1: When you put them in the right conditions, you take
11:16
Speaker 1: one cell, it will keep dividing indefinitely, And we should
11:21
Speaker 1: probably talk about why that's a big thing, why other
11:23
Speaker 1: people's cells don't normally do that. So before we move on,
11:27
Speaker 1: I think it's a good time for a message break. Hey,
11:34
Speaker 1: now we're back. Should we get into apoptosis? Apoptosis or
11:39
Speaker 1: cellular suicide is or program cell death because you pick
11:44
Speaker 1: many names. So from what I understand, program cell death
11:47
Speaker 1: is like this whole general idea that a cell self destruction,
11:51
Speaker 1: but there's different ways, and up poptosis is one of them. UM. Basically,
11:55
Speaker 1: when a cell is no longer needed, it commits cellular suicide. Uh,
12:00
Speaker 1: it's not abnormal or scary, UM. Healthy adults, we have
12:04
Speaker 1: billions of cells dying in our bone matter and intestines
12:07
Speaker 1: every hour. Yeah, and then your white blood cells come along,
12:09
Speaker 1: absorb all the detritus and move you move this this
12:14
Speaker 1: stuff out through your sweat. Yeah. It basically balances cell
12:17
Speaker 1: division out um tissue would grow or shrink if it
12:21
Speaker 1: wasn't for apoptosis. So it's a good thing, right. Um.
12:25
Speaker 1: Apparently we have web fingers as we develop in the womb, right,
12:29
Speaker 1: and thanks to apoptosis, these cells degrade and your fingers
12:35
Speaker 1: go back to to non webby versions of themselves. Well,
12:40
Speaker 1: they don't go back to or go to. Yeah. Basically
12:44
Speaker 1: all the cells, all the cells die in between your fingers,
12:48
Speaker 1: and you don't look like a man from Atlantis. Right.
12:50
Speaker 1: And this is also, like you said, I think a
12:52
Speaker 1: check on cancerous growth because cancer is well tumor is
12:57
Speaker 1: a cluster of cells that are growing out of control.
13:00
Speaker 1: One of the conditions of life is controlled growth. Cancer
13:03
Speaker 1: is uncontrolled growth. One way to keep that in check
13:07
Speaker 1: is to have cells have a lifespan, and they typically
13:10
Speaker 1: do in the healthy person. The cells divide um between
13:16
Speaker 1: forty and sixty times and then they die. That's what's
13:21
Speaker 1: called the hay Flick limit. Yeah, we've talked about that. Yeah,
13:24
Speaker 1: and do you remember what it was. We've talked about
13:26
Speaker 1: that a few times. Yeah, well, it's just so fascinating.
13:28
Speaker 1: It is. Uh So cancer cells, like we said, don't
13:33
Speaker 1: have the pc D and hers, thanks to Mike, are
13:37
Speaker 1: just the hardiest they had ever discovered, and uh I
13:41
Speaker 1: went on to be used in at least sixty cases
13:44
Speaker 1: uh in medical journals and articles. Well, this is probably
13:49
Speaker 1: written three months ago. You know. Um eleven thousand patents
13:54
Speaker 1: relate to the use of the he LA cells. And
13:58
Speaker 1: they're easy to store, they're easy to ship. They're basically
14:02
Speaker 1: the best cells out there to work with for most
14:06
Speaker 1: kinds of disease, although in viruses UM, although some doctors
14:10
Speaker 1: say they can be a little too robust and mess
14:12
Speaker 1: things up. So they these cells are. They're extremely robust,
14:17
Speaker 1: They divide very quickly, They're very hardy. They also apparently
14:21
Speaker 1: are airborne. Is one one way that they go and
14:24
Speaker 1: contaminate other cultures. They can easily be transferred on clothes
14:29
Speaker 1: or gloves or whatever, so they to some researchers, they
14:33
Speaker 1: basically are like invasive. They're an invasive cell line. Uh
14:37
Speaker 1: and by the early seventies they contaminated so many other
14:42
Speaker 1: cell lines UM that doctors had to figure out how
14:45
Speaker 1: way to identify HeLa cells from other cells. So they said, well,
14:50
Speaker 1: we'll just call the family and and I think nine
14:54
Speaker 1: day las Henriette's husband got a phone call that just
14:59
Speaker 1: completely con used him. And this is the first seat
15:01
Speaker 1: ever heard. This is the first the family found out
15:04
Speaker 1: that these cells, that that this was going on the family.
15:08
Speaker 1: This family had no idea. Yeah, but like we said,
15:13
Speaker 1: they weren't highly educated. So when someone calls from Johns
15:16
Speaker 1: Hopkins and says, your wife is still alive as cells
15:20
Speaker 1: in a lab, they were really confused. And the daughter
15:23
Speaker 1: even thought for a while that they had literally cloned
15:29
Speaker 1: her mom and that versions of the mom were living
15:33
Speaker 1: in London. Like, you know, she had no idea what
15:37
Speaker 1: they were talking about, right, if so? But not only that,
15:40
Speaker 1: the call apparently was later proven to be very misleading
15:44
Speaker 1: because they were saying, we need to find out if
15:46
Speaker 1: your kids have cancer. So well, what they wanted was
15:50
Speaker 1: to see if they had the same properties as their mom.
15:53
Speaker 1: They wanted they wanted the kids DNA so they could
15:57
Speaker 1: identify HeLa DNA and other cultures because it had become
16:01
Speaker 1: so invasive, right, so they were basically saying, you guys
16:06
Speaker 1: might have cancer. But really what they were after was
16:09
Speaker 1: their genetic material for for DNA typing. That's right. That's
16:12
Speaker 1: extremely misleading and mean because once the kids went in
16:17
Speaker 1: and got their um blood workups done, Johns Hopkins never
16:21
Speaker 1: called back, so they were just left to wonder what
16:26
Speaker 1: was going on. But I mean, think about it. So
16:28
Speaker 1: let's say somebody called you and said, hey, um, we
16:30
Speaker 1: think you might have cancer, come in and do some
16:32
Speaker 1: blood work. You go in and get your blood work done,
16:34
Speaker 1: and then they never call you back again. Wouldn't you
16:37
Speaker 1: be worried? I get on the phone. Sure. So, like
16:42
Speaker 1: we said, Chuck, this is a pretty morally complex situation. Um.
16:46
Speaker 1: When the family did finally find out, they also realized
16:48
Speaker 1: that this this their mother's cell line. Um was a
16:53
Speaker 1: multi billion dollar cottage industry and they hadn't seen a
16:56
Speaker 1: penny from it. Um. And so medical science kind of said, well,
17:00
Speaker 1: ho hold on, let me let's let us explain all
17:04
Speaker 1: the great things that your mother's cells have done. Right,
17:07
Speaker 1: And I mean there's they've been involved in some pretty
17:10
Speaker 1: spectacular scientific achievements. Yes, like we said, the study of viruses,
17:15
Speaker 1: everything from measles to mumps, um created vaccines. In fact,
17:21
Speaker 1: curing creating a vaccine for HPV. Yeah, so that she had.
17:26
Speaker 1: They ended up getting a vaccine for that from ourselves,
17:28
Speaker 1: which is pretty great. Like you said, Jonas Salk. With polio,
17:32
Speaker 1: which has been eradicated here in the West, we should
17:35
Speaker 1: explain how that happens to Like um, when you have
17:39
Speaker 1: a live human cell, you have an opportunity to do
17:44
Speaker 1: whatever you can to it and simulate what would happen
17:47
Speaker 1: in a normal human body. And with polio, they took
17:50
Speaker 1: the polio virus and injected the heli cell with the
17:54
Speaker 1: polio virus, and then they injected the heli cell with
17:57
Speaker 1: some of Jonas Salk's polio vaccine, and the polio virus
18:02
Speaker 1: was eradicated in that heli cell. That's right, Yeah, you
18:07
Speaker 1: just figured out that your vaccine works. They've used it
18:11
Speaker 1: to study tuberculosis. Yeah HIV, we already said HBB Parkinson's.
18:16
Speaker 1: They've used a lot in Parkinson's research, and even in
18:22
Speaker 1: the transportation and standardization of just using cells like this period,
18:28
Speaker 1: because you know, they were so great and they wanted
18:30
Speaker 1: to use these, they had to figure out a better
18:33
Speaker 1: way to ship them back and forth. And just a
18:35
Speaker 1: lot of the standardization of these procedures are in place
18:38
Speaker 1: now because of everyone wanted to work with these cells,
18:42
Speaker 1: which is pretty great too, So okay, chuck. Um the
18:45
Speaker 1: family finds out about this, they spend basically decades saying like, hey,
18:49
Speaker 1: can somebody fill us in on what's going on here?
18:51
Speaker 1: How are you guys making money off of this? Like
18:53
Speaker 1: what's the deal? And we're just being ignored, And finally
18:58
Speaker 1: Rebecca Sclute gets some involved. Yeah, she's a science writer.
19:01
Speaker 1: I don't think we even mentioned that. Yeah, and the
19:03
Speaker 1: author of the Immortal Henrietta Lacks right, Yeah, I think
19:07
Speaker 1: it's The Immortal Life, The Immortal Life of Henriette A.
19:09
Speaker 1: Lacks Um. And over time Sclute kind of befriends the
19:14
Speaker 1: family and ends up writing this book and telling the
19:18
Speaker 1: story of Henriett of Henrietta Alacks and basically just captures
19:24
Speaker 1: the national attention. Basically says, this family, you can make
19:28
Speaker 1: a pretty good case, was totally exploited as a whole,
19:32
Speaker 1: or by the medical establishment as a whole, and let's
19:36
Speaker 1: talk about this, and that's exactly what happened as a result. Yeah, um,
19:41
Speaker 1: the family did look into getting money from it, but
19:46
Speaker 1: that is pretty much completely off the table because that
19:51
Speaker 1: opens up a can of worms that everybody's cells ever
19:55
Speaker 1: used in any experiment would have to be tracked back
19:58
Speaker 1: to their original family members and compensated. In the courts
20:03
Speaker 1: of resoundingly said no, no, no, we can't do that.
20:07
Speaker 1: Set halt medical research because we know it and we
20:10
Speaker 1: can't do that. There was a case in nineteen eighty
20:13
Speaker 1: where this this patient with leukemia um found out that
20:18
Speaker 1: his doctor had taken cells from a biopsy and created
20:22
Speaker 1: a cell line worth three billion dollars, and this case
20:26
Speaker 1: went all the ways Supreme Court. In the Supreme Court
20:28
Speaker 1: said sorry, man, yeah, once it's taken from your body,
20:31
Speaker 1: it doesn't belong to you any longer. To a lot
20:33
Speaker 1: of people still don't necessarily agree with, but that's the
20:37
Speaker 1: that's the status quo as it stands to think. Everybody's
20:40
Speaker 1: very protective of scientific um progress, especially in in eradicating
20:46
Speaker 1: diseases as they should be. However, earlier this year there
20:51
Speaker 1: was finally some good news for the Lax family. UH
20:55
Speaker 1: The National Institute of Health UM in I had to
21:00
Speaker 1: two of her descendants to be part of the HeLa
21:02
Speaker 1: Genome Data Access Working Group, which basically now they're a
21:06
Speaker 1: part of the UM the board which considers applications to
21:10
Speaker 1: use her cells. Yeah, because in addition, while this whole
21:14
Speaker 1: thing is going on, this whole national conversation about what
21:17
Speaker 1: should be done with the cell line, and um, you
21:20
Speaker 1: know what rights a a person has to their own cells.
21:24
Speaker 1: This European Scientific Agency cracked and published the HeLa genome,
21:31
Speaker 1: which they published Henrietta Lacks's genome just out there, open
21:37
Speaker 1: to the public. And it's been proven that you can
21:39
Speaker 1: you can find someone's identity out just from their genome,
21:44
Speaker 1: and you can also find out a lot about their descendants.
21:46
Speaker 1: So it was a big deal. This European agency took
21:48
Speaker 1: it down. But now it's been placed behind this UM.
21:52
Speaker 1: It's it's under like a password, lock and key in
21:56
Speaker 1: this database, so there's access to it. You can get
21:59
Speaker 1: access to but you to apply to that working group.
22:01
Speaker 1: That's right. So now the Data Access Group UM, they
22:05
Speaker 1: apply for permission, they agree not to contact the family
22:09
Speaker 1: members of Henrietta Lacks, agreed to use them only for
22:13
Speaker 1: biomedical research only, and UM, some of the family members
22:18
Speaker 1: will handle those requests along with uh, you know, the
22:21
Speaker 1: other people on the board. It's not like they're the
22:23
Speaker 1: only ones that are left to decide this of course,
22:26
Speaker 1: and um, like I said, they did ask about paying,
22:29
Speaker 1: and they said, maybe we can think of some other
22:31
Speaker 1: ways for you to make money off this, like patenting
22:34
Speaker 1: a genetic test for cancer based on your mom's cells.
22:38
Speaker 1: But they have not yet come up with any way
22:40
Speaker 1: to make money off of it. So a lot of
22:43
Speaker 1: other people have, Like you were saying, you can go
22:45
Speaker 1: online and buy a vial of cells for like two
22:49
Speaker 1: bucks or something like that. There's other ones that, um,
22:53
Speaker 1: you can buy that have HeLa cells that are like
22:55
Speaker 1: ten thousand dollars. And I read this explanation of all
22:59
Speaker 1: that that if you take one of those ten tho
23:01
Speaker 1: dollar vials, it has all these other patented processes and
23:07
Speaker 1: proteins and genes and things, and that that account for
23:11
Speaker 1: that increased amount of money, that increased cost. And then
23:16
Speaker 1: even the vile it's like, well, it costs money to
23:19
Speaker 1: produce these things and store them and ship them and
23:21
Speaker 1: all that. So the the idea that there's somebody out
23:26
Speaker 1: there that's just making tons of cash off this is not.
23:29
Speaker 1: That it's much more spread out and it's much less obvious,
23:34
Speaker 1: and um, there's really not that much of a bad
23:37
Speaker 1: guy in this story as much as you want there
23:39
Speaker 1: to be. And even the author of the book is like,
23:42
Speaker 1: there's there's a lot of like shifting sands in this
23:45
Speaker 1: and it's not cutting dry and black and white. And
23:48
Speaker 1: you know, at the end of the day, we want
23:49
Speaker 1: biomedical research to keep progressing. Yeah. I don't think anyone
23:53
Speaker 1: necessarily looking for a bad guy as much as they're
23:55
Speaker 1: looking for a good ending for that family. Well, it
23:58
Speaker 1: sounds like they got them. No, I mean they got
24:02
Speaker 1: an apology. Yeah, there's now endowed um scholarships and chairs
24:06
Speaker 1: at universities around the country in her name. And I
24:10
Speaker 1: think if you use HeLa cells now in a study,
24:12
Speaker 1: you say, these cells in this use in this study
24:15
Speaker 1: were donated by Henrietta Lacks. Yeah, I think that was
24:18
Speaker 1: part of the agreement. Yeah, I was talking money though,
24:20
Speaker 1: you know, I got you like, they're still poor and
24:22
Speaker 1: they still don't have medical coverage. Actually I don't know
24:24
Speaker 1: if that's true today, but yeah, yeah, Oh, there's also
24:27
Speaker 1: a Henrietta Lacks Foundation too. There is, Uh, you got
24:31
Speaker 1: anything else? I got nothing else? All right, Well, if
24:34
Speaker 1: you want to learn more about Henrietta Lacks, you should
24:38
Speaker 1: probably go read The Immortal Life of Henrietta lacks by
24:40
Speaker 1: Rebecca's glute. Sure to check out the website Foundation all
24:44
Speaker 1: that Stuff, and you can also go on to how
24:47
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com and type henri alas in the
24:50
Speaker 1: search par Since I said search parts time for listener,
24:53
Speaker 1: maybe right, I'm gonna call this bio diesel dad. Um, Guys,
24:59
Speaker 1: after listen a ten easy ways to save money, I
25:01
Speaker 1: want to tell you about my dad's super cool garage
25:03
Speaker 1: biodiesel LOP. He got into homebrew biodesel about five years
25:07
Speaker 1: ago and since developed a very sophisticated setup which can
25:10
Speaker 1: produce a ninety gallon batch of biofuel in three to
25:14
Speaker 1: five days. UH. The simple rundown is that you filter
25:18
Speaker 1: use vegetable oil, boil off the excess water, and lie
25:21
Speaker 1: in methanol and filter filter filter. UH. He regularly gathers
25:25
Speaker 1: to used vegetable oil from various restaurants and bars around
25:28
Speaker 1: town who are happy to give it to him. UH.
25:31
Speaker 1: He uses the biodiesel to self sufficiently fuel my mom's SUV,
25:35
Speaker 1: his sedan, his truck, and his twenty six ft fishing boat. UH.
25:40
Speaker 1: No engine modification is required and can be mixed at
25:42
Speaker 1: any ratio with normal petroleum diesel. As far as money
25:47
Speaker 1: savings go, the raw chemicals only end up costing about
25:49
Speaker 1: a dollar per gallon, so I'll let you do the math.
25:52
Speaker 1: While I'm not recommending that everyone go out and build
25:54
Speaker 1: their own biodiesel plant in their garage, especially since I'm
25:58
Speaker 1: not sure how legal it is a permit, I was
26:00
Speaker 1: wondering that too. I thought you guys would find this
26:03
Speaker 1: interesting at least. I started listening to the show in
26:05
Speaker 1: September during the long drive moving to Stanford where I
26:08
Speaker 1: just started work as a grad student. And I've been
26:11
Speaker 1: a die hard fan ever since. And that is from Ben.
26:14
Speaker 1: Thanks Ben, and Ben's dad dude, I don't know his name,
26:17
Speaker 1: but good on you, sir. Yeah, it's pretty cool. French
26:21
Speaker 1: fire machine. Yeah uh oh, let's see if your family
26:25
Speaker 1: members are doing something pretty interesting, we want to hear
26:29
Speaker 1: about it from you. You can tweet to us at
26:31
Speaker 1: s Y s K podcast. You can join us on
26:33
Speaker 1: Facebook dot com, slash so if you should know, you
26:35
Speaker 1: can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at Discovery
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Speaker 1: dot com, and you can join us at our website,
26:42
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know dot com for more on this
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Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works?
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Speaker 1: Dot com