Today, we are closing out Women's History Month with the story of Henrietta Lacks. Henrietta died of cervical cancer in 1951 - but her cells have lived on. They divide and duplicate at such a rate that if you could gather all the HeLa cells in one spot they could weigh 50 tons. They have been used in creating vaccines, researching cancer, and mapping the human genome. All the while, Henrietta's family didn't know that this was happening and would get asked for DNA samples and blood tests every so often. We recommend learning more by reading "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot.
Today, we are closing out Women's History Month with the story of Henrietta Lacks. Henrietta died of cervical cancer in 1951 - but her cells have lived on. They divide and duplicate at such a rate that if you could gather all the HeLa cells in one spot they could weigh 50 tons. They have been used in creating vaccines, researching cancer, and mapping the human genome. All the while, Henrietta's family didn't know that this was happening and would get asked for DNA samples and blood tests every so often.
We recommend learning more by reading "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot.
Sources:
https://www.amazon.com/Immortal-Life-Henrietta-Lacks/dp/1400052181
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/the-double-edged-helix-231322/
https://www.elle.com/life-love/a39586444/how-serena-williams-saved-her-own-life/
https://research.unc.edu/human-research-ethics/resources/ccm3_019064/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3440234/
https://www.atcc.org/products/ccl-2
Hi Friends! Our transcripts aren't perfect, but I wanted to make sure you had something - if you'd like an edited transcript, I'd be happy to prioritize one for you - please email doomedtofailpod@gmail.com - Thanks! - Taylor
and we are on the air live being broadcast to all 50 major media markets
around the world hi Taylor how are you I'm good how are you I'm good not as
good as you um I'm very excited for you and for your upcoming travels Taylor is on her way to Japan on or
tomorrow yeah I'm very nervous and excited why are you nervous about the
flight is that it yeah I just don't like flying but I'm gonna be fine um Kiara
our friend who is a fan of ours she sent me some stuff about flying which is very nice to her um yeah I'm just like I just
I'm not not stoked about it but it'll be okay did you choose bigger seats or
better seats or how how did you do it no we just have like regular seats because
I mean I'm not not a millionaire oh you're not no not yet no
I got to stop asking you to send me money then because this whole time I assumed you were I am tired of sending
you all my cash yeah always um well welcome to Doom to fail this is the podcast where we
cover Doom to fail topics and we have a ton of fans and supporters around the
world that we love and adore and we're going to probably get a few new ones is Taylor makes her way into Japan and
shares stickers and content and Gorilla Marketing tactics you know honestly I
didn't even think of that I'll bring stickers I want to see if anybody in Japan has
listened I'm looking at a map yes oh I feel like 19 downloads from Tokyo I feel
like Lindsay is that just you or is it like other people um but well there's not 19
lindes I know maybe she listened to 19 episodes oh I see I see someone in
Kawasaki and one 19 people in Tokyo that's in the past seven days what about all time no that's not very ready uh
yeah no I'm very very very excited I'm very nervous but I'm very excited I'm nervous for the planks I just hate flying and it's 12 hours long so like
that it's gonna suck but I'm G to survive and um I can't wait one of my
friends just got back from Tokio and she was constantly posting pictures man the
food looks otherw world good it looks like there's a place here in Austin
called um Uchi and they have like three locations one's Ucho one's Uchi one ucha
and it's like this Premier pristin it's like where you go on your anniversary you know like it's one of those kinds of
places she was posting pictures from like truck stops there that like looked as good I was like what like how is this
I know I've heard that like there's like a tuna and rice thing at 7-Eleven that's really
good there's like a t 7-Eleven that's like a big thing there so I'm excited to like see that and then Juan has made like a thousand reservations for like
all sorts of activities and shows and trains and events and yeah yeah it it
has the distinction of it is the only place where I've heard people have gone to and they will not stop raving about
it like a lot of people go to Hawaii a lot of people go to other parts of the world they're like yeah it's great it's awesome we had a great time but Japan's
the only one where I'm like when I talk to you about it like you're not going to understand like it's literally like another planet and it's I'm looking
forward to being insufferable about it no listen say you've been to Japan it's
it's you don't get it fars you don't get it you've been to Japan all you do is
just ask me for my Millions you don't understand the other side of life there's a comedian on Instagram oh my
God what ises her name she does like people who come back from vacation and it's so funny because she's like oh I was there for two days but she like has
an accent and like you know whatever it's like hilarious the Madonna effect of having a British accent yeah
exactly exactly um um well awesome awesome we're really excited about that
it's probably gonna have some impact on recording schedule for the next week but whatever we'll sort it out so here's
what I've been doing the past couple days it's Laura Roso by the way on Instagram um so I have
scheduled six re-releases so one for next week that
will be with whatever we're doing and then like well I did one yesterday and then five for the week that I'm on spring break and then I have all social
media scheduled I have all the YouTube video scheduled so like everything is ready there will still be content should
we be telling people this as opposed to making them think that we're just doing this constantly like in the moment no
because I literally say to re-released so they would no whatever Taylor your
facts have no place here um they're smarter than well thank you thank you though for doing all that work because I
know it's not easy and it's got to take a ton of time so appreciate that um so I guess new episode wise we'll rejoin you
in a few weeks so or so yeah we'll record on April I'll be home April uh
13th we'll record April 14th easy PE uh you'll be asleep April
14th but whatever we'll we'll try it we'll we'll do what we can I mean I'm going to who the [ __ ] knows so one thing
I this is almost going sound mean and I don't mean it mean
okay so I kind of Envy how short you and one
are because no totally y'all can actually be on planes
and semi be comfortable I can't imagine being an inch taller than I am and I'm like 53 at best if I was 5'5 I'd be like
this is too much for me I can't imagine being how are you 6'1 oh my God God that
sounds terrible it is well it's it's Terri it's good in like day-to-day life traveling wise I mean on a plane you
know like how do yeah it reminds me of our former CEO so Taylor and I's former CEO was like what like 71 or something
like he was she was super super tall and he had this like Acura that he got
forever like a normal Acura sedan and when you saw him driving it he did the
thing where he laid the seat all the way back yeah like you thought he was trying
to be cool but no he literally couldn't fit like his most of his legs and waist
was on the part that your a normal person's back goes on you couldn't behind him yeah yeah yeah no he was so
tall um yeah I can't I can't I mean if if I was you know seven feet tall I
would have to pay for a first class seat or whatever or something you know like I couldn't you just couldn't I don't get
like if if anybody is like that tall or like in the I would say six seven and
above range is probably when you get into that kind of territory and and you're not super
wealthy like how do you survive I don't get it like you just never travel like I don't understand how you can get by I
don't know my friend Nate is like 65 and he SP like the middle seat and like Delta the economy and I'm like Nate like
you're what on Earth like he just probably couldn't move his body at all you know no it's awful it's awful I just
came back from uh that that my most recent trip and I was on Southwest and sitting in the plane and my knees were I
had indentation marks on my knees from where they were in the seat in front of me because I literally I had nowhere to
put them I know I know I feel uncomfortable and I'm much shorter than I went up to I went up to the um the
gate agent and was like Hey listen I would really really appreciate if you could I book kind of last minute I would
really appreciate if you put me into either an aisle seat or if you can have someone come here and break my leg so I
can fit in the middle seat that you have assigned to me and she did not find that funny at all oh that's too bad I like
she that a little Charming thank you um also speaking of speaking of Jim buying that Acura I have to get a new car my
car is officially total they're not going to fix it that kind of sucks
Taylor that really really does suck it does suck anybody who has recommendations on a car let me know cuz
I mean luckily it all happened yesterday the day before I like start my plan so I can like move on from it and
whatever but man what a butt what a butt of a situation Taylor I'm gonna go ahead
and kill my video because it is it you it is freezing on your end oh sure was
it wasn't happening for me but I'll do it it's raining here so maybe that's why um so sucks to hear sorry about that was
that car paid off yes oh God I know you
know what's funny I I like occasionally like when I'm feeling super weak and
kind of foolish when it comes to money we'll start looking at cars like oh man this is such a cool car and then and
then I look at my car like my car's fine like I have no issues with it like like it's I definitely was like I would [ __ ]
about my car because like well I mean technically my husband bought it and it was his car and then he bought a new car and I got that one cuz I haven't been
driving for very long but um so thank you Juan for letting me have the car but um now you know I was like G like it
doesn't have like apple carplay you know and like I I did I was going to get it like detailed and clean so I'm glad I
didn't do that would waste that would have been absolute waste um well good
luck on that on that search um the one thing I would tell you Taylor because I was like super on the EV train uh and
like love Teslas and I actually had an order in for rivan for a period of time
and as I've like kind of like gotten a little bit older with it I was like I was like man stopping every like 200 or
300 miles and having to like sit there for 30 to an hour that's like that'll eat up a lot if
you're traveling like it'll eat up quite a bit of your day I a little weird I
mean I'm not saying they're not great they are great but like I think they're great if you're like I have my I have like my regular car and then my car that
I drive around town to go to restaurants whatever like that's my Eevee like that's one that's a EXA like if I had
like my solar panels set up and my Tesla battery in my house and you know blah
blah blah then things right right money to save money you know all
those things make money to save money um well let's go ahead and Dive Right In You are going first today if I recall
correctly I am uh let me go let me go first um cool so Faris today is March
30th this will come out on April 1st but I'm still going to do one more specifically for women's History Month
um and also speaking of Jim remember how much Jim hated April April Fool's Day
yes I hated to um so that was dumb so let's do one more women's History Month story this one actually Kiara our friend
who sent me this stuff about flying she also had sent me this story and I was like duh this is something I absolutely
should have done so why did I do this earlier so thank you for reminding me and I'm glad that glad that I'm doing this today thank you yeah thank you so I
read a book this week that I read in a book club when I lived in New York back in 2010 um do you know the story of the
black women who died in 1951 whose cells have lived on and have been instrumental in creating venes yeah yes I I man if if
you gave me like 15 minutes to actually like tackle that part of my brain I could probably remember her
name um well this is a story of Henrietta LAX yes yeah okay it was there
yep it's there so there are there's a lot great story okay yeah let's let's
this is this one's I'm super this let's through this out it's so good and I'm so I'm excited to hear what you know your
your questions and thoughts a lot of it's like sciency that I like barely understand um but there's a lot in this
story there's definitely a lot of race inequality income inequality lack of sex education and like health education and
lack of Health Care um historically and sort of this will cover this whole this
whole story one thing that um I do want to mention again and I hope I say it again in the outline if I miss it I want
to say it upfront is so the book that I read is called The Immortal Life of Henrietta LAX by Rebecca Scot it's
really good definitely recommend watching it or reading it it also is a movie um
Opie yeah it is a movie as well but um one thing that Henrietta lax's children
say again and again is that her cells contributed so much to science and we'll
talk about what that means but her children couldn't afford health insurance you know fued up um so that's
you know something that is kind of hovering over this story um so the book
The Immortal Life of Henri LAX is written by Rebecca sco who is a white woman she's very aware that she's a
white person you know inserting herself into the story reporters had visited henrietta's family on and off for
decades but some of them were scammers you know trying to get them to like Sue or or get money from them and we'll talk
about why um in 1976 Michael Rogers a reporter for Rolling Stone wrote an
article he called Henrietta Helen lane cuz people didn't um didn't know her her real name at that point it would been
like Mis miswritten down many many times um but the book is really about Rebecca gaining Trust of the family and
especially henrietta's daughter Deborah um Oprah plays Deborah in the movie and so it's a really like there's the story
of their friendship and just kind of helping them understand what happened and it's it's because it's very confusing and very complicated so
definitely recommend reading that to learn a little bit more about like the family but um let's talk about a few
things there's race and Healthcare henrietta's life and then what happened to her to her cells
so I I guess I'm going to start with like right now about you know in in in
America but I'm sure this is not just an American problem um one story that stood out to me is do you remember when Serena
Williams almost died when she had her baby um no not really so this is from an
L article that she wrote in 2022 and underneath the headline the first line is quote black women are nearly three
times more likely in a dieet for child birth than white women Serena Williams was almost one of them here in her own
words she tells her story so this article that you can read it in L and I'll put the um the link in so Serena
Williams had some blood CL clots in her lungs that she knew that she had from before so she was like having her baby
going through that and then she started coughing and she was coughing so badly that she like ripped her C-section scars
like like absolutely horrible and she knew that there was something wrong and people they didn't listen to her until
she finally got a doctor who listened to her and checked and there was a blood clot on its way to her heart she almost
died wow and this woman is like literally one of the greatest athletes
of all time you know like more connected to her body than like anyone to have who was going to have a baby and they didn't
believe her that she had these things happening to her and that happened in 2021 so still a huge a huge thing
um so if we go back in time some of the thing that I think our true crime uh
people will remember and know is like do you remember how in like the when people were first figuring out how a human body
worked they would dig up dead bodies to dissect them yes and like that's
fun all all doctors were basically grave robbers too yeah in like a creepy a like
1700s in London kind of way you know yeah um yeah exactly so you had to like
you like people to like Rave a rob a grave or like whatever or how like HH Holmes's like remember he was like
dating dating quotquot whatever that that woman and then like her skeleton ended up in like a un's office yeah yeah
terrifying so haven't known a lot about bodies for a very very long time um but another terrible thing that happened in
the mid the mid um 1900s was of course the Holocaust and all of the terrible
things that the Nazis did to experiment on people the Japanese also experimented on people I'm sure that the US did as
well I could probably find and I have examples of that too but a lot of it is outlined in the nurur codes which were
after World War I have you heard of that yes of course so it's basically 10 um 10
parts that are essentially like regulating the way that you are allowed to experiment and you know work with
human bodies so I kind of cut out some of them but essentially they are you
need the voluntary ENT of the human the responsibility for the consent rests
upon the person conducting the experiment so you have to be the person that asks for consent if you're going to
do it the experiment should be such as to yield fruitful results for the good of society so it should have like a good
goal um it should be based on the results of animal testing to start with and like that is something that I've
heard recently in like the doctor deaths where people are have you ever listened to those or saw those on it's like
another podcast it's also a um a Netflix show but it is about doctors who just are like liars you know who just like do
these terrible things and a lot of them have these things they're like I'm sure this will work but they never tested it on animals and they lied and said that
they did you know okay can I first people I just take a moral stance here I
also don't think we should be testing on animals no this is the opposite stance The Stance is that you should test on
animals first before humans and my stance is you shouldn't be tested on animals what you test on I don't know
like I mean now with AI they're saying that AI can run like every test possible
like simultaneously like just do that like we don't need to be hurting animals
sure I don't know if that's true I'm I'm I'm people over animals but whatever um
more of these are more of the darber code um it should be the experiment
should avoid all unnecessary physical and mental suffering no experiment she conducted where there's a reason to
believe that death or disabling injury will occur unless in the experiments
where the Physicians are the subjects so you can do it to yourself but you can't do it to other people yeah I've heard of
that I've heard doctors who inject themselves they found some like cures that way yeah the guy who discovered
that mosquitoes um yes yeah mosquitoes do malaria and like the Spanish Flu he
was like [ __ ] you and had a mosquito bite him and yeah he died but he figured it out
um there is uh the risk should never exceed that determined by communitarian
importance the to the problem solved so the risk shouldn't be greater than the reward proper preparation should be made
adequate facilities it should be conducted by scientifically qualified persons the human subject um should be
at Liberty to bring it to an end and the scientist in charge must be prepared to stop at any stage so if it Go starts to
go too far they have to stop so basically like don't be a dick get people's consent don't do anything crazy
and that came out of the nberg trials obviously we know that that's not something that has like been 100% on for
a very very long time um considering you know about the Tusk experiment in the
United States so just to recap that was from 1932 to 1972 the government gave
600 black men syphilis to test the symptoms of syphilis even though after 1940 they had penicillin to cure
syphilis they kept doing it um we know try why they did that I think it was I
mean they they wanted to see what would happen like which is didn't they know I mean we was it I think it's not like
it's not just that I think it's like other things too like if you have seil that make this worse or whatever I maybe a little bit more to it but it was
clearly a violation of the nor code and bad sorry one last question that later
yeah yeah go ahead how did lotes fly under the radar totally that's a great
question right because they you would say like I mean I guess you'd say like this is for they're good great or good or for
them you know okay so you can basically spin anything into like it's just spin you're just spinning something until
like yeah okay got it 100% 100% um yeah there's also
like you know the hypocracy no harm and obviously doctors have done harm a lot
you know right um not you know not every doctor but there there are you know some standout examples um so there's you know
the Tusk experiment happening in the United States around the time that we're going to talk about um there's also something that is like I think a social
class related thing that I've heard about in like developing countries um that I think kind of applies here too is
like a mistrust of doctors because if you by the time you get to
the doctor you're too far gone so you die right does that make sense so you have that so then you're like Well when
the doctor kills people you know right when like if you could have gone there earlier because if you had the insurance
or you had the money or you had the means then maybe you could have been safe by the time you get there it's too
late there's also it's that but also like like governments the US in
particular has leveraged medicine to like oh absolutely so like for example
with osam Bin Laden you know how they did that whole thing what like they killed him no
because they need well they needed to identify um they need to do like they
need to get more more circumstantial evidence that he was there on that compound and so what they did was they put together this like program to test
kids for genetic diseases and for what whatever I forgot exactly what it was
but basically what they were trying to do is basically bring this whole city together and Village together to like do
blood testing for medical purposes only for the sole reason to isolate his DNA
to better understand whether he was in that City in that compound cool and czy
and so now people they are like we are not you yeah going yeah exactly yeah
totally that's crazy um so yeah so there's that too so people don't always
go to the do don't always go to the doctor when when they can or they have mistrust for for good reason you know um
also I think you should go to the doctor you haven't been in a while both both ways go um so now we are in Baltimore in
the late 1800s um and there is a man named John's Hopkins he is a strong union supporter and seems like a pretty
a pretty good guy in 2020 there was some evidence that he may have been a slave owner um despite being a union supporter
and abolitionist but then there's evidence against that that maybe that was like paperwork for another reason so I don't know the answer but that's just
out there in John's Hopkin Hopkins University and hospital is being very open with what they're learning as they're learning it so but what we do
know for sure is that John's hop John's plural that's his name Hopkins uh did
leave money for a hospital and a university to specifically help poor people he wanted to help black people uh
people who couldn't afford uh care he had part of it was like an orphanage Institution for young black children who
needed um needed support he wanted people to be able to have health care um regardless of money or race so that was
a big part of John Hopkins Legacy that we still see today with his university um in the 1950s Johns Hopkins John's
Hopkins exists as a university and a hospital but it's also segregated like everything else you saying John's
Hopkins John plal John's yep got it John's Hopkins um so
he oh I I know you haven't seen this but we've all seen hairspray everyone else has seen hairspray and hairspray is
about segregation in Baltimore and that's in 1962 so um there's a lot of of
you know race relations happening there um you know always but also in in the 50s and John's Hopkins is where you go
when you are really sick so it is the only hospital that will do these like Advanced tests on black people in the
area and your primary care doctor will refer you John's Hopkins and by the time you get there you're very sick make
sense yeah cool so keep that in mind and let's talk about Henrietta Henrietta La
LAX was born Loretta Pleasant that was her her birth name on August F 1st 1920
in Rowan o Virginia her family lived in former slave quarters that were owned by her white great-grandfather so the
family right now even has like a a white Lexis and black lax's side um that you
know they're genetically related from some point but she had a white great-grandfather um her mom died when
Henrietta was young her mom was having her you know her tth kid like on the floor of the house like you know very
very poor um and her mom passed away so Henrietta and her siblings moved to Clover Virginia and she lived there with
her cousins um one of the cousins that she shared her room with was a cousin named David but they called him day and
he was a couple years older than her and they end up getting married and having kids so Henrietta marries her cousin day
um and that's something that we also see over and over again and I just happen to see a good daily M Daily Mail article
and again like I know that's daily ma silly but um talking about people who
find out via like 23 me that they've like dated their brother because of
like small towns where people have like slept around not told anybody or like those cases where I think we talked
about this where like the doctor like used his sperm and all of the things oh God yeah you know um like those are
horrible um I also so in that article in the Daily Mail they had the US laws
about marrying your cousin so many states like in California it's legal you can in other states there's some like
rules around it like if you can't have kids then like sure if you're old and you want to get marry your cousin that's
fine things like that so you can't do first cousins can you yeah wow I'm not
asking for any particular reason I'm just curious it just seems like first cousins is like kind of a you should
draw the line in the sand somewhere and it's funny because like they frown upon it in some cases then others they don't
like I feel like one of like the further back historical cases first cousins got married and people were like ew but then
like other other times it's fine you know so it just depends obviously like we get hops spgs who like can barely
close their mouths because of all they inter wearing um hen Henrietta and D's children will end up with a history of
really poor hearing um high blood pressure and Asthma and diabetes so they do have a lot of health problems some of
that could be you know because their parents were cousins um henria had her first child when she was 14 and she
ended up having five children in total her child Elsie had epilepsy and cereal
paly she Henrietta took care of her until she couldn't anymore and Elsie was sent to a place um called the hospital
for the Negro insane which is as terrible as it sounds um Jes in the book
that in The Immortal Life of Henrietta LAX uh the author and Deborah henrietta's daughter go there it's a
different institution now and they find a record with a photo in it and in the photo there's like a white woman's hand
like holding Elsie's head toward the camera and Elsie is like very clearly not okay you know like her hair's a mess
her eyes are bulging out she's like screaming it's haven't seen it but they describe it as being absolutely horrific
um Elsie will die when she's like 15 in that institution but while she was home henria like you know took really really
good care of her and she took really good care of her family her friends um you know people who remember her she was
always like kept her really well dressed her house was really nice she always had her nails painted you know she was just
doing her best to like live her life with private yeah exactly exactly um
Henrietta and day got married when she was 21 and he was 25 and they moved to Baltimore um after PE Pearl Harbor steel
became something that obviously the United States really needed so there were a lot of Steel meals in Baltimore and they moved up there um there's also
some things that are happening um day is sleeping around and as we see this again and again she's going to get some STDs
like most of history people have STDs and as um I'll say or said before this
is before penicillin um and before you were able to like to cure those things so um just keep that in mind um in she
ends up having more children she has David Deborah a son named Zachariah his
name was Joseph he converted to Islam later in life but his name is Zachariah now
and in 1950 Henrietta is 30 years old and she tells her family that she feels
a knot in her womb that's how she describes it there's there's something going on there's a knot in
there and it turns out that she's pregnant was Zachariah so people are like oh that was it it was a baby you
know like that's what you were feeling but um after she has him she still feels it she like there's still something
wrong there's still something there I know there's a knot in there so her doctor refers her to John's Hopkins and
they feel the lump on her cervix there's definitely a lump there like the size of a marble um so they do a feel I guess
yeah okay never mind if it's that big I mean and there's also I stories people have like a tumor that's like the size of a golf ball and they never feel it
you know yeah but but she felt it she knew that it was there it was like like the like the front of her cervix so she
could like she could feel it like with her hand you know so like she knew that it
was there so they took a biopsy of it um and then they found out that it was cervical cancer um it was there were two
types of cervical cancer and she was misdiagnosed with like the wrong one but
it doesn't really matter because they would have treated it the same at that time anyway right so that's that's not
it so she starts treatment and this is where we're talk about radium treatment again so what they do is they literally
put like a tube of radium inside her vagina and they put sheets of lead
around it to try to like save the rest of her body and just like keep it in there for a while and hope for the
best which is crazy yeah hopefully they Advanced since
then yeah and so this is also um something for women that I learned in
this that I was like are you freaking kidding me so have you ever heard I'm laughing have you ever heard you know
papsmear is uh I know what those words are but I don't know what it is so
essentially they put like a a a plastic tube inside of your vagina and then they
take like a big Q-tip and like swirl it around and then take it out and just like make sure that everything is okay in there um that was invented by in the
1920s by the Greek physician uh Georgio Papa Nicola whatever it's very
Greek but it's named after him his last name is Pap which I thought was hilarious it was like I had no idea that
it was name after a dude named Pap so but um that was like part of the thing as well um but during this time well
take the biopsy to see what exactly is going on and while they're giving her the radium um they give her cancer cells
to a doctor named George Otto uh guy guy spelled gey um he is researcher at
John's Hopkins and um Henryetta didn't know that they were going to be given
away not that they would have ever told her and not that they really tell anyone like it's something that is
complicated to a huge degree like where does your blood go after it's drawn they
still have it somewhere probably you know I mean it wasn't being given away it was going off for testing right right
right but then but then like but then you know something happens and he's going to it's going to grow But like after the testing is done then like who
owns the rights to whatever's left so there's been a lot of like back and forth of like and now like there was no
like Hippa at this point where like that she had any um you know privacy rights
with with her C and she wouldn't have known and she wouldn't have cared you know like I I don't think that it would
have been a thing that would have like cross their mind to be like I don't know what's going to happen to my CS um there are official US guides
and I have a link to like the official government website on it now um but one part of it says quote when in the course
of an intervention any part of the human body is removed it may be stored and used for a purpose other than that for
which it was removed only if it's done in Conformity with appropriate information and consent so if they like
biabs see something for you and you sign a paper that says you can use this these cells for something else in the future
then they can do whatever they want with it I mean look until you started talking
like until you brought this up like exactly maybe 15 seconds ago the question never occurred to my mind of
like what happens to my CS never thought about it yeah Henryetta wouldn't have thought about it I've never thought
about it like the one the one thing that I remember very specifically signing away is the um the umbilical cord blood
when my kids were born because there's like some research that umbilical cord blood can help other babies so some
people if you're like Rich you'll save your blood you'll put it in like a blood bank that so the umbilical cord will be
saved just in case your baby needs it but we donated ours I don't know if I ended up getting thrown away or whatever
but like we sign papers that like if for some reason theal Core Blood when I had any of my babies could help another baby
I was like take it you know what would it help what would they do with it I have no idea it's like something I have
no idea but that that's the only time I remember signing something being like you can specifically use this for whatever you want CU I was like if this
can help another baby great yeah but even even with that t you probably wouldn't have even known if they didn't tell you to sign this you would have
been like wait what about that blood in the emical court I never would have known I certainly wouldn't have thought about it because I was in the middle of
having a baby right you're like I'm busy I don't care um so the
there's some stories um of people who have sued after they found out that their cells were being used like commercially um and people are making a
lot of money from them um but for the most part like the laws like are like you know once you give something away
it's no longer part of your body um so the radium didn't work on on henrietta's
uh tumor in her cervix so she went back for radiation treatments where they would like Point radiation towards her
so what they did is like on her on her belly like where her cervix is they tattooed two little dots they always did
it in the same place and they would put like lead on the rest of her body and they would just aim radiation towards
those spots and it would like burn her skin you know and like left the skin on
her belly and on her um like black burned black because of like the radiation treatment isn't that crazy no
so really terrible um just absolutely awful um her family and friends were you
know she had a newborn baby her family and friends would come visit her she ended up ending up like she would go and do these treatments and then she'd like
walk to her cousin's house and like stay there until she couldn't do it anymore until she was like just physically unable to do it um her family would like
try to donate blood to help her like whatever CU she was just like so sick they would sit with her in the hospital
um she would like rise in pain in in the hospital her sisters would like have to hold her down she was tied to the bed
because she would go into these like fits of pain she was in so much pain um she had so many tumors in her body that
ultimately her cause of death was blood poisoning because she could no long her kidneys couldn't work because they were
covered in tumors and she couldn't pee because her uretha was covered yeah
everything's covered in t tumors do you know how long from when they admitted her for this treatment until that CA of
until she died yes she went into the hospital at the beginning or I think the end of January 1951 and she died on
August 8 1951 oh wow that was pretty quick yeah
like SE like seven months um and she was 31 years old when she died y so she was
super young um they her husband give permission for an autopsy and when they
did the autopsy they said there were it looked like there were strings of pearls in her body there were so many tumors so
crazy it just like it just it was just absolutely everywhere over her whole entire body um later we will learn that
the cancer that she got came from HPV which is something that we know about now and now you can get a vaccine
against HPV that can help fight cervical cancer so that's like directly because of Henrietta that we're able to do that
um we'll talk about what that means in a second so at her funeral she was buried in an unmarked grave in Clover Virginia
um her family said that um at the service there was a gust of wind that was so bad at knocked down houses you
know and they were like that was her like saying goodbye like rattling things
um meanwhile her you know children are going to kind of go go around live with
family they're going to have pretty rough lives unfortunately um a lot of them some of them will be in prison um
they will just kind of be trying to make it work um but oh also something that I
didn't I forgot to write down but her son Zachariah who um he converted to Islam in prison but he was so abused by
his stepmom that he just like became a really violent person um and it's very very sad like the poor kids their life
was sad after their mother after their mother died um but meanwhile separate
from The Lax family um Dr Guy and his wife have a lab they are patenting ways
to keep cells so you need to be able to test things on cells to see how cells
work how they grow kind of figure all this stuff out um but cells don't grow out of the body you can have a cell in
like a vial or in like a dish with like something called cell culture and this is I you know just very lightly talking
about this but so it can like essentially feed and keep the cells alive but eventually they will die um
but Henrietta did not die they doubled and they doubled and they doubled if you
kept feeding them cell culture they would grow to the size of any container that they had um and this hadn't
happened before they had never had a cells that lasted longer than like 24 hours out of the body and they keep keep
growing um and they named the cell the hila cell and that's just like the first
two letters of her first name and the first two letters of her last name as like an organizing system so they put him in a tube wrote hila H EA on them um
and then the next day came back and they were doubled and then they were doubled and then they were doubled and they just kept growing um so these these were cancer
cells right that's they biopsied yes they're cancer cells okay um she they
did have some regular cells but those died but the cancer cells are the ones that are continuing to grow um so I mean
like this time it this had just this had never happened
before in in Science History I have like a little bit of the reason why I don't 100% understand it I'd love for someone
to you know I could read the book a third time and try to figure it out but essentially um they were able to isolate
one cell and that cell just kept growing dividing and dividing and dividing they have high teleras which is something
that helps them divide indefinitely and they're missing a tumor suppressor Gene um these will also help with like
mapping the human genome and figuring out who who we like all that stuff later but um they're missing something that
suppresses tumors that most regular cells have and even cancer cells have so that for me that tracks with how fast it
spread in Henrietta that her cancer cells did weren't even regulating themselves at all they were just growing and growing you know yeah so Dr guy
started to give them away cuz he was like we can do things with these like we can do tests on them and we can see what
what you know what different things happen to to human cells so he would kind of give them to people close by and
then later he would test their limits he would like you know go to American Airlines and ask the pilot to like hold
it in their in their pocket on their shirt and take them across the country and see if they survived and they did
they would send them in the mail and like sealed packages to see what would happen and they would they would survive train rides and flights so he could send
them everywhere he would send them for free he would send them to anyone who wanted them could get a vial of of heila
cells um today if you go to the American type culture collection at
atcc um I can't tell how many cells it is but you can get like one packet of hila cells for
$550 and they will be sent to you Frozen um you can buy them right now can I ask
something that's going to make me sound kind of ignorant yeah why is this amazing I'm gonna tell
you later I'm getting there okay okay
so when you when you order them from atcc decom it literally says they're from a 31-year-old black female with
cervical cancer so they're all they're Henrietta cells today they are so and you know how big a cell is it's like
unbelievably small like yeah Sunny you there are so many hila cells they
estimated if you put them all together they would weigh 50 tons of just non-stop reproduced since
1951 M so here's what you can do and why it's important um you can test
everything on the these human cells they have sent them to space they have put them underwater theyve submitted them to
radiation every disease you can possibly think of the heat the coal everything um
and so because of that they can test things on them that they can't test any other way I don't like 100% understand
the science behind all of that but because of these cells they were able to
create vaccines and create things that can help you know understand cancer and
understand things and say like okay well how can how humans you know survive in space eventually and bring our cells up
there and just kind of see what happens you can do any test possible on these cells because they are always the same
and they never stop growing but why can't you do that with a normal cell because they
die on their own oh because then you have to do it on a real human being because they need
their cells to stay alive to got it got it exactly exactly so you can have this like um what's it called when it's like
the like the one like the first test like you can have that and then do BUN test
to it and like compare it to the original you know the control and yeah control yeah exactly and they are there
is a little bit of stuff in like later in in the book that is like are these cells
even human anymore are they even her anymore you know what I mean like if you have this cell and you like continue to
divide it forever and ever like the cell that you have now is like from you know the 500 millionth division of a cell
like what is it anymore you know so there's a lot of like it's cuz it
is like a I don't know a weird thing that happened so by right away so she
dies in 1951 um by 1953 Joseph sulk is using it for his
polio vaccine so um he uses the heila cells and that helps him create the vaccine for polio he needs as many cells
as possible to do his experiments and his tests and for other doctors to kind of do similar things so he needed a
Factory and they built a heila cell producing Factory at Tuskegee University
so the same place that was doing the Tuskegee um experiments they were they
had a um a lab run by the black people who went to the university um mailing it
out all over the world which is wow pretty incredible by like two years later um they were you know some things
that Al also happened like one guy injected the cells directly into people with and without cancer to see what
would happen um and he did that on prisoners who volunteered for it so what did they learn um I think that like if
you had if you didn't have cancer it would the cancer cells would um they
would die inside of you but if you did they would grow so it was like a thing to try to figure out like what would
happen um they used it for Gene mapping if you were to inject yourself with her
cell would it would just die so It could only really be immortal if it was outside your body yes or if it like it's
like another cancer cell yeah because your body is going to fight cancer cells got it got it yep yep okay I'm probably
totally wrong all the doctors who listen going be like what the hell um but they were they did like some things in the
70s that were like Sensational they like merged them with animal cells to see what would happen and like so that of
course like the towos would be like there's going to be a half human half mouse you know and that wasn't what they were doing they were doing other things
that I don't understand but there's that um they've basically been um
experimented with in in a thousand different ways they're so strong they fly through the air and contaminate
other experiments so you have to like really be careful with their heila cells because they can go into another experiment and change the results to
that one um so in ever since she ever since she died even before she died Dr G
guy was using her um her cells and they've just been you know
everywhere in the meantime her family has no idea this is happening so they
start getting calls in the 70s to get like their blood drawn and Deborah her daughter thinks that it's a cancer test
she doesn't know and she's about the same age that her mom was when her mom passed away so she's like thinking that
she's going to also get this you know she's like in her in her early 30s but
they don't tell them anything um the doctors just kind of take their blood and and don't tell them anything they or
they hear rumors like there are clones of Henrietta walking around um they you
know like do the cells feel anything does she know what's happening are she in pain you know that she's going everywhere like how much of her exists
like so much of it is so hard to understand um that they just like and no one helped them no one told them
anything they were just like doing this and sometimes asking for their DNA and their blood um they also had her name
wrong in um in uh like the news they called her Helen Lane um but it's not
it's Henry relax um and so a lot of the book is about you know letting the family know what is happening showing
them the cells teaching them about the science Deborah passed away um during the writing of the book but she had um
you know tried to really tried to learn she tried to go to school for Science and figure all this figure out what was happening to her mom because it's
something that is hard to wrap your brain around now always you know and and she was like I don't I never met my
mother really she died when she was a little girl and so she wanted to like figure out what was happening the lack
family medical records were published without their consent um one dude wrote a book about the hila cells and never
mentioned the family or henriett even once you know that like wasn't a part of something that had crossed their minds
um in well yeah but it sounds like that's like kind of what supposed to actually happen I was looking up while
you were talking the immortal cells and they found many many others after that
and none of them identify where they come from like once I'm reading right now says that it came
from peripheral blood of a 14-year-old with leukemia another one came from a
58-year-old Caucasian male with some sort of tumor in his lung right so this
in this case like you know in 2013 henrietta's DNA sequence was published
and that's a in that's like very specifically the DNA sequence of her
family you know we know who she is and we know who they are so and like I said in the beginning you know all of this
stuff that like we are really lucky to have like the polio vaccine you know um
and all this research that we can do with these cells and her children can't afford health insurance you know like
yeah all the stuff that has been created because of this um and then in in so
that I think that was like one of the big ones they knew who she was and they talked about her in the press and they
would bother her family and they would try to like but they wouldn't explain to them what was happening um and then in
2013 so in 2013 her DNA sequence was published research kept coming out like
on that DNA sequence and um her estate her family sued thermofisher in
2021 and they settled out of court on July 30th 2023 for an undisclosed amount
so hopefully they got something you know from and I I don't think it's even about the Cs at this point it's about
like their whole life they've been like hounded by the Press they've been hounded by people wanting their DNA and
their cells to try to like figure out all these things they're using them they're not like harming them with the experiments but they
are they're using them yeah they're using them I mean that's the part like when when you were talking about this I
was like I was like you shed skin cells all the time do you really give a [ __ ] like does anybody ever care that you
wash your hair and like a piece of hair comes out and it's like no it's just it is what like the cells themselves don't
seem like the reason for the compens so much
as you know the actual labor of the family to help
facilitate complete completing the picture of what's going on that's the
part where I'm like yeah of course should fight you should do something for that yeah exactly exactly um so you know
since henrietta's death she's been put in the National Women's Hall of Fame there's countless labs and statues and
plaques and things named after her um and her cells will most likely live forever in some sort of
you know Frozen unfrozen state where they grow or not grow or in space or in
the bottom of the ocean like they're kind of everywhere which is what makes them special is that they continue to
grow we continue to use them but um we should also talk about the person they came
from make sense there's yeah there's like nine or so I can tell that they have found
um but only it looks like four or five are human one's like a mouse one's like a
posum On's a monkey
um yeah weird like I it's this is why I'm not a scientist like exactly I'm
still like why but also like I don't I don't get I get it like okay it's just it's like when you try and explain why
how airplanes fly and it's like somebody has this figured out like I don't know
job how much more I need to sort I don't need to look at this anymore exactly I'm the person who's in charge of this but
we know that this like is happening and it's just it's a wild a wild story and
crazy that they I mean imagine like the day in the lab being like Oh My Gosh these are not dying that they're contining to grow like what can we do
with this oh and also so also Dr um Dr guy when he died he he had cancer and
he wanted to be experimented on and he asked his um co-workers to like pull out
his tumor and like biopsy it and see if it see if it was Immortal see if that would help but they didn't they opened
him up and they didn't want to do it because they thought that it would um they didn't want to risk it so they um so him back up and he was pissed when he
woke up and found out that they hadn't done the thing that he asked them to do and um he ended up going around to
different hospitals and being like do every experiment possible on me while I'm still alive like you have something
that you've wanted to test on a human I'm here and he he he got a bunch of things done to him before um before he
passed away of cancer as well which is brave and nice yeah yeah he did um he
did what what he would have done to somebody else probably yeah totally and he but he
did part of the N code is like if you say it's if you're a doctor and you say it's okay then go go nuts yeah
interesting uh I learned a lot this was really educational like I I love when our when our episodes like segue into
like just like generally interested things around
like like the science aspect of it and you like researched it well enough to where I'm like asking questions and you
you get it and you're able to kind of articulate like I don't I don't again like all this stuff like I have no idea
yeah totally we're clearly not scientists but um this is a story that we should know in some way shape or form
you know I don't think it's c that we're not scientists I think you're I think some people think that if they were to listen to us talking like these guys are
probably scientists you know what I wish I she that we could turn into cameras right now and I was wearing like a lap
coat and like goggles like my talking about my favorite part in airplane is when the one lady's like I think the man
next to me at the doctor and Li nson is sleeping with the stethoscope on you turn on and like I'm wearing like
a monacle and a top head like that's not what a scientist looks like for I have goggles on and I'm like
you're like tayl those are the wrong kind of goggles I have like a scuba goggles on oh man fun time um that was awesome
thanks thanks for sharing that Taylor what what an awesome like episode to to
do right before we do a little Hiatus um so uh cool um lots lots learned um but
yeah I guess is there anything that you want to make announcement wise no if you um I we have a whole bunch of new
Instagram followers because I did real and I paid for it to be out there um on
EG the Christie so if if you have listen recently and and um I got the Christy episode had a lot of um a lot of
downloads so we really appreciate everybody who might be new um thank you for thank you for listening and if you
have any ideas send us an email Doom tood gmail.com and we're at um Doom toil
on all socials and also if you think if you know what kind of car I should get let me know yes right in with your suggestions
on the we have to put some guard rails around this Taylor okay it has to be a car you own or have owned
and you need to have owned it for 3 years minimum my first thought was like
should I get a cyber truck like obviously not but like I was like let's get weird with it could you imagine I I
see those things everywhere now Austin I've never seen one oh God they are no
matter how many times I've seen it every time I see I'm like it looks like a refrigerator driving down the street
like it looks so strange that's so funny I have to come Vis to see one because I definitely will never see one here I do
see a fair amount of Teslas but I've not seen is a truck and that be hilarious yeah I'm thinking Subaru so give me a
call oh I love Subaru Subaru are great Subaru like I can really get behind this because that's a Blair thing too because
Blair says she also see Subarus all over Austin and she really wants one yeah so the okay so here's one thing especially
For You all-wheel drive get a car that has all-wheel drive but mostly cars have all-wheel drive are also super expensive
Subaru is like the only company that's figured out how to do it like consistently on the cheap or cheapish and so all their cars have all-wheel
drive which is great like I had an all-wheel drive car when when the freeze hit Austin I was so
thankful while everybody else just spitting on spinning in the middle of the streets like I was actually able to move in go places so yes that' be cool
maybe I would kind of want maybe a green one I don't know I could I feel like that's like could I get a green car can
I do whatever I want right now you're like yeah you can do whatever you want right now so oh we adults I've never
bought a car before like I didn't get my license until 6 years ago and like I said my husband bought our car then he
bought himself a new car so been like driving Juan's cars very gratefully but now I'm like what if I got a car just
for me what could that even be like and then I'm like I was like looking at green cars I
like bom these cool cars they were like not real they're like models of cars I'm like okay I just need to calm down and get like a normal car if if you dear
listener Drive Green Subaru please write to us and tell us if the color has
impacted your life positively or negatively oh good question call there we go um sweet well we'll go ahead and
wrap this up thank you Taylor let me go ahead and cut this out and