WEBVTT - Ep 70 Henrietta Lacks: HeLa, There, & Everywhere 0:00:00.240 --> 0:00:48.120 Hi, I'm Erin Welsh and I'm Aaron Allman Updike and. 0:00:47.960 --> 0:00:50.159 This is this podcast will kill you. 0:00:50.760 --> 0:00:53.920 Yeah, welcome everyone. 0:00:54.440 --> 0:00:59.560 Welcome, Welcome this episode. I'm very excited about it because 0:00:59.600 --> 0:01:02.000 it's fair very different than our normal episodes. 0:01:02.080 --> 0:01:04.760 It's a very different I have can I be completely honest. 0:01:04.800 --> 0:01:08.240 I was really stressed out about it, say it has 0:01:08.280 --> 0:01:12.560 been so different than our normal episodes. But finally today 0:01:12.680 --> 0:01:15.200 as I was like organizing all my notes, I got 0:01:15.240 --> 0:01:16.240 really excited about it. 0:01:16.400 --> 0:01:20.360 Oh good, okay, good. I'm very excited to hear what 0:01:20.440 --> 0:01:21.480 you're gonna tell me. 0:01:21.959 --> 0:01:23.679 Yeah. I hope that you like it. 0:01:24.200 --> 0:01:27.000 I'm sure that I will, Erin, Come on, I'm very 0:01:27.040 --> 0:01:31.000 excited to learn all about what you're gonna tell me today, Erin, 0:01:31.040 --> 0:01:35.160 because I know very little about it. Well, and your 0:01:35.200 --> 0:01:37.720 nerves may have gone away, but mine are still here 0:01:37.880 --> 0:01:40.200 and I'm still nervous that I'm not going to do 0:01:40.240 --> 0:01:44.720 a good job. But you know what, just uh, it'll 0:01:44.720 --> 0:01:45.240 be okay. 0:01:45.360 --> 0:01:47.760 It's okay that we always feel that way and we 0:01:47.920 --> 0:01:48.680 just do our best. 0:01:48.760 --> 0:01:50.880 Erin, that's true, that's true, we do do our best. 0:01:51.080 --> 0:01:53.440 Yeah, what are we even talking about today? 0:01:53.440 --> 0:01:53.600 Aarin? 0:01:53.640 --> 0:01:55.760 I feel like the suspense has been building. 0:01:56.160 --> 0:02:01.480 I know, I know. We are talking today about Henrietta Lax, 0:02:01.800 --> 0:02:05.840 Henrietta Lax and her cells and her cells. 0:02:06.040 --> 0:02:11.680 You may have heard her name in your intro bio class, 0:02:11.880 --> 0:02:16.360 or in your cell bioclass, or maybe in your class 0:02:16.360 --> 0:02:17.920 on medical ethics. 0:02:18.080 --> 0:02:20.639 Maybe in the HBO movie that just came out. There 0:02:20.639 --> 0:02:23.160 are tons of different ways that you may have heard 0:02:23.200 --> 0:02:26.520 about Henrietta Lax, and we are going to kind of 0:02:26.560 --> 0:02:30.400 like try to cover a lot of those different ways 0:02:30.560 --> 0:02:32.960 or context in which you may have heard her name, 0:02:33.840 --> 0:02:38.920 including things like tissue culture and the ethics of informed consent, 0:02:39.720 --> 0:02:42.880 and also like who was Henrietta Lax? 0:02:43.320 --> 0:02:45.200 Yeah, that's the part I'm most excited about. 0:02:45.560 --> 0:02:49.000 Yeah, me too. And there's a lot to cover. So 0:02:50.280 --> 0:02:53.079 maybe we should begin where we usually do. 0:02:53.240 --> 0:02:56.760 We should, which is always with a quarantiny. 0:02:56.400 --> 0:02:59.280 A quarantiny, Aaron, what are we drinking this week? 0:02:59.440 --> 0:03:05.359 This week we're drinking ambrosia. Ambrosia, drink of the gods 0:03:05.800 --> 0:03:08.320 that confers immortality. 0:03:08.880 --> 0:03:12.440 Immortality, and we will learn so much more about what 0:03:12.520 --> 0:03:15.600 immortal means. Oh, I'm really. 0:03:15.360 --> 0:03:16.880 Excited to talk about it. 0:03:16.960 --> 0:03:21.040 Yeah, okay, good, okay, But first, what is in ambrosia? 0:03:21.560 --> 0:03:25.560 Well, of course, being in the Midwest, ambrosia salad's like 0:03:25.560 --> 0:03:26.760 a Midwest thing, right. 0:03:26.960 --> 0:03:28.799 I think so? Or is it a Southern thing. 0:03:28.960 --> 0:03:31.519 Maybe it's a Southern thing. I feel like I've seen 0:03:31.560 --> 0:03:37.520 it here. Anyways, it's rum and coconut cream, pineapple juice, 0:03:37.560 --> 0:03:40.880 orange juice, some grenadine. You blend it all up. So 0:03:40.960 --> 0:03:44.040 it's like an ambrosia salad in a glass with rum. 0:03:44.400 --> 0:03:47.800 Yeah, it's I think it's going to be better than 0:03:47.840 --> 0:03:49.840 like the actual ambrosia fruit salad. 0:03:50.000 --> 0:03:52.119 I hope. So because I'm not a big fan. 0:03:52.680 --> 0:03:55.160 You mean you don't like mayonnaise with your fruit? Wait? 0:03:55.280 --> 0:03:57.360 Is it mayonnaise? I thought it was cool whip. Oh no, 0:03:57.440 --> 0:03:57.680 it is. 0:03:57.760 --> 0:03:59.800 Well it's not cool whip. It's actually sour cream. I 0:04:00.560 --> 0:04:04.440 oh okay, just like yeah, but I think you could 0:04:04.440 --> 0:04:09.360 also include mayonnaise or cottage cheese or yogurt or cream 0:04:09.440 --> 0:04:11.119 cheese or putting them on the Wikipedia page. 0:04:11.200 --> 0:04:12.680 I was like, are you looking at it? You're looking 0:04:12.680 --> 0:04:18.800 at a rescue right now. Oh well, anyways, we'll post 0:04:18.800 --> 0:04:21.440 the full recipe for that quarantine as well as our 0:04:21.480 --> 0:04:24.480 non alcoholic plusy berita on our website. This podcast will 0:04:24.520 --> 0:04:26.960 Kill You dot com and all of our social media channels. 0:04:27.240 --> 0:04:31.040 Yes, indeed, all right, what other business do we have 0:04:31.120 --> 0:04:32.560 to take care of? Well? 0:04:32.640 --> 0:04:35.560 As always, we have a good Reads list and a 0:04:35.640 --> 0:04:40.520 bookshop dot org link on our website. We also have 0:04:40.800 --> 0:04:44.239 merch by incredible artists on our website. We have links 0:04:44.240 --> 0:04:48.920 to transcripts. We have non alcoholic episodes. So much this 0:04:48.960 --> 0:04:50.240 podcast will kill you dot com. 0:04:50.880 --> 0:04:54.400 Oh, Aaron, good job everything. I was like, is there anything? 0:04:54.600 --> 0:04:55.800 I can't think of anything else? 0:04:56.279 --> 0:04:57.240 I think that's everything? 0:04:57.400 --> 0:05:02.400 All right? Well, okay in that case, shall we take 0:05:02.400 --> 0:05:04.280 a break and then get started. Let's do it. 0:05:32.680 --> 0:05:37.320 So, let's start with what a cell culture is, because 0:05:37.720 --> 0:05:42.719 a lot of people that aren't you, Aaron maybe have 0:05:42.880 --> 0:05:49.200 never used cell culture. So cell culture essentially just means 0:05:49.480 --> 0:05:53.400 growing cells. Any kind of cells could be human, could 0:05:53.400 --> 0:05:58.400 be other animals, could be bacteria, yeast, whatever, in some 0:05:58.520 --> 0:06:01.320 kind of artificial medium, like in a bottle or a 0:06:01.360 --> 0:06:05.479 petri dish something like that. So we have cell cultures 0:06:05.640 --> 0:06:09.280 of all different kinds of cells. In order to grow 0:06:09.360 --> 0:06:12.560 cells of pretty much any tissue type, you just need 0:06:12.600 --> 0:06:16.560 some basic environmental conditions, like a stable temperature, a nice 0:06:16.640 --> 0:06:20.599 pH some kind of substrate which might just be like 0:06:20.640 --> 0:06:23.280 a petri dish, and then you need growth media, which 0:06:23.360 --> 0:06:26.240 is just a fancy word for fluid or gel or 0:06:26.240 --> 0:06:30.360 something that has nutrients vitamins, salt, sugars so that cells 0:06:30.400 --> 0:06:33.880 can grow and thrive and reproduce. So the use of 0:06:33.920 --> 0:06:38.599 cell culture in biology at this point is so essential 0:06:38.839 --> 0:06:42.080 to the study of both basic science, like our basic 0:06:42.200 --> 0:06:47.160 understanding of cell biology, and also to applied clinical research. 0:06:47.920 --> 0:06:52.800 We use cell cultures to understand underlying cellular mechanisms that 0:06:52.920 --> 0:06:57.080 underlie all of life on planet Earth, but we also 0:06:57.200 --> 0:06:59.719 use them to study like new drugs to see if 0:06:59.720 --> 0:07:03.600 they're toxic to cells, to understand the effects of radiation 0:07:03.880 --> 0:07:07.880 or viruses or cancer on cell function. We use cell 0:07:07.880 --> 0:07:11.680 culture to grow viruses to make vaccines like the rabies 0:07:11.720 --> 0:07:16.120 vaccine or hepatitis or chicken pox vaccines. And we also 0:07:16.200 --> 0:07:20.280 use cell cultures for a ton of what are called biopharmaceuticals, 0:07:20.320 --> 0:07:24.360 which are things that cells produce that we can then 0:07:24.600 --> 0:07:29.520 use as drugs, like enzymes, proteins, antibodies that we use 0:07:29.600 --> 0:07:33.680 for cancer treatment or infectious disease treatment. We produce hormones, 0:07:33.760 --> 0:07:37.040 clotting factors, like so many things that people rely on 0:07:37.240 --> 0:07:40.920 every day are only possible because of cell culture. 0:07:41.520 --> 0:07:43.280 It's unbelievable. 0:07:43.840 --> 0:07:45.520 It's really it's amazing. 0:07:45.760 --> 0:07:52.000 It's like hard to overstate how basic they are, in 0:07:52.480 --> 0:07:53.840 like essential. 0:07:53.680 --> 0:07:55.320 Essential, absolutely. 0:07:55.880 --> 0:08:01.000 I used HeLa and mouse macrophage cells as an undergrad 0:08:02.040 --> 0:08:07.320 to study like these different proteins on plague bacteria to 0:08:07.360 --> 0:08:10.840 see which ones were involved in adhesion or invasion of 0:08:10.880 --> 0:08:11.400 the cells. 0:08:11.680 --> 0:08:15.840 That sounds incredible. My labs in my master's program, we 0:08:15.920 --> 0:08:20.000 used verro cells, which are from an African green monkey kidney, 0:08:20.760 --> 0:08:24.160 to test whether the viruses that we were finding in 0:08:24.200 --> 0:08:28.480 waste in seawater were infectious. Although I didn't do that 0:08:28.520 --> 0:08:30.440 because I could never keep my cells alive. 0:08:32.480 --> 0:08:35.440 I just remember being so fascinated by when I was 0:08:35.480 --> 0:08:39.080 doing these essays by making sure that like, oh, are 0:08:39.240 --> 0:08:42.680 the bacteria actually infecting these cells, and you would like 0:08:42.760 --> 0:08:45.679 put the flask under the scope and see everything. It 0:08:45.720 --> 0:08:49.520 was I couldn't believe what I was seeing that like 0:08:50.280 --> 0:08:53.200 this incredible process that you read about. It was just 0:08:53.280 --> 0:08:54.439 I still can't get over it. 0:08:54.800 --> 0:08:56.240 I can tell that you're getting little. 0:08:56.120 --> 0:08:57.840 Chills when I'm getting little chills. 0:08:59.679 --> 0:09:03.720 Okay, So Aarin in our kind of history section, you'll 0:09:03.720 --> 0:09:06.800 be going through the history of how HeLa cells which 0:09:06.800 --> 0:09:10.400 are the cells that were taken from Henrietta Lax without 0:09:10.400 --> 0:09:13.880 her permission and used and how big of an impact 0:09:13.920 --> 0:09:16.560 they've had on scientific knowledge. But the question that I 0:09:16.600 --> 0:09:21.079 want to answer in this section is why were Henrietta 0:09:21.120 --> 0:09:25.160 LAX's cells such a massive step forward in cell culture 0:09:25.200 --> 0:09:29.880 technology and what makes the cell lines that we use 0:09:29.920 --> 0:09:33.760 for cell culture today so different than what was used 0:09:33.760 --> 0:09:34.560 before HeLa. 0:09:34.960 --> 0:09:37.280 Mm hmm, okay, I'm very excited. 0:09:37.360 --> 0:09:41.160 Oh my Tish, it's like, it's pretty cool. So before 0:09:41.240 --> 0:09:44.400 Henrietta Lxis cells were taken from her and became what 0:09:44.440 --> 0:09:48.640 we now know of as HeLa cells, scientists were still 0:09:48.720 --> 0:09:52.920 trying to grow mammalian and human cells from tissues, but 0:09:53.040 --> 0:09:57.280 they always died, and usually after a pretty short period 0:09:57.280 --> 0:10:00.040 of time, so you could run like one experiment and 0:10:00.000 --> 0:10:02.120 and then you'd have to harvest more tissue or more 0:10:02.160 --> 0:10:05.079 cells and start all over. So the reason that HeLa 0:10:05.280 --> 0:10:10.280 changed everything is because Henrietta Laxis cells didn't die. They 0:10:10.360 --> 0:10:13.840 kept growing and replicating and continue to do so today 0:10:14.480 --> 0:10:19.800 like seventy years later. And so Henrietta Laxis cells became 0:10:19.920 --> 0:10:23.160 what is known as a cell line, and a cell 0:10:23.200 --> 0:10:30.440 line essentially means cells from whatever humans or other animals, insects, plants, bacteria, 0:10:31.040 --> 0:10:36.000 from any tissue that can be grown in culture indefinitely. 0:10:37.000 --> 0:10:38.360 Why and how? 0:10:39.080 --> 0:10:39.600 Yeah? 0:10:39.720 --> 0:10:44.800 Okay, so let's first understand Henrietta laxis cells, the first 0:10:44.800 --> 0:10:48.760 cell line. These cells came from a sample of tissue 0:10:48.800 --> 0:10:53.200 from cervical cancer. And we already discussed in our HPV 0:10:53.320 --> 0:10:57.800 episode how cervical cancer develops as a result of HPV infection, 0:10:58.120 --> 0:11:01.280 so I'll just ever so briefly review that for anyone 0:11:01.440 --> 0:11:05.679 who didn't listen or forgot. We know that high risk 0:11:05.880 --> 0:11:09.920 HPV strains have a couple of different proteins E six 0:11:09.960 --> 0:11:13.840 and E seven that integrate into our genome, like get 0:11:13.880 --> 0:11:17.839 into our DNA and turn off a few genes called 0:11:18.040 --> 0:11:22.000 tumor suppressor genes. And what this does is that allows 0:11:22.040 --> 0:11:26.160 for cells to grow in an uncontrolled manner. So all 0:11:26.200 --> 0:11:29.920 cells follow a very specific cell cycle as they grow 0:11:30.000 --> 0:11:32.960 and divide, and they spend most of their time in 0:11:33.000 --> 0:11:37.320 a phase called interphase where they grow and also replicate 0:11:37.600 --> 0:11:41.199 their DNA, and then they undergo mitosis, which is the 0:11:41.240 --> 0:11:45.120 actual division of chromosomes, and then cytokinesis, which is when 0:11:45.320 --> 0:11:48.600 the cell divides into two separate cells and along the way. 0:11:48.640 --> 0:11:52.240 There's a lot of different checkpoints usually during that interphase 0:11:52.600 --> 0:11:55.680 that ensure that cells grow at an appropriate rate so 0:11:55.800 --> 0:11:57.800 not too quickly. We have to make sure there's enough 0:11:57.880 --> 0:12:01.960 nutrients to sustain growth and division, and to make sure 0:12:01.960 --> 0:12:05.920 that the cells aren't replicating any mistakes or problems in 0:12:05.960 --> 0:12:08.680 the DNA. So the proteins that we talked about in 0:12:08.720 --> 0:12:13.000 the HPV episode affect these parts of the cell cycle. Primarily, 0:12:13.400 --> 0:12:18.360 they encourage excessive growth and division. That allows for division 0:12:18.360 --> 0:12:21.040 of cells even if there are problems or mistakes in 0:12:21.080 --> 0:12:24.520 the DNA, or even if there's maybe not enough nutrients, 0:12:24.520 --> 0:12:29.680 they'll just keep growing and growing. So that's part of 0:12:29.840 --> 0:12:34.080 the equation. But that isn't quite enough to cause cells 0:12:34.120 --> 0:12:38.520 to grow indefinitely. Yeah, that's part of what accounts for 0:12:38.600 --> 0:12:43.280 cells that can grow more rapidly and persist longer. But 0:12:43.360 --> 0:12:46.480 there's another piece that we have to understand, and that 0:12:46.679 --> 0:12:48.280 is telomere's. 0:12:48.800 --> 0:12:52.120 Oh I love them, I know, right. 0:12:53.440 --> 0:12:56.640 So a telomere is the end part of our chromosomes. 0:12:56.720 --> 0:12:59.400 It's like a cap on the end of our chromosomes. 0:13:00.120 --> 0:13:06.200 Very very tips. In general, during normal DNA replication, it 0:13:06.240 --> 0:13:10.040 can be very difficult for our cells to fully replicate 0:13:10.080 --> 0:13:13.640 the entirety of the chromosome. So often the very very 0:13:13.920 --> 0:13:17.840 ends of the chromosomes, where the telomeres are actually becomes 0:13:17.960 --> 0:13:22.880 shorter with each cell division. This is normal, This happens 0:13:22.920 --> 0:13:25.760 as a normal part of cell division. So the telomeres 0:13:25.800 --> 0:13:28.840 are there as like an insurance policy, like Okay, well 0:13:28.880 --> 0:13:31.559 we miss the very end, but we didn't really need it. 0:13:31.640 --> 0:13:35.320 No big deal. But as cells divide and divide, those 0:13:35.480 --> 0:13:39.040 ends get shorter and shorter with each division, and eventually, 0:13:39.320 --> 0:13:43.360 once the telomeres are sufficiently shortened, it actually triggers an 0:13:43.440 --> 0:13:46.080 arrest of growth and a rest of the cell cycle 0:13:46.200 --> 0:13:49.600 and no more cell division. So you can kind of 0:13:49.600 --> 0:13:52.520 think of it like every cell having a limited number 0:13:52.559 --> 0:13:56.440 of times it can divide before those telomeres get too short, 0:13:56.760 --> 0:13:59.240 like you've heard like your heart only has a certain 0:13:59.320 --> 0:14:02.839 number of beats or whatever. Yeah, I don't think that's 0:14:02.880 --> 0:14:05.160 really true, but it's kind of like that idea, all right, 0:14:06.480 --> 0:14:13.240 But in some cells, like cancer cells, they've lost the 0:14:13.360 --> 0:14:17.760 ability to sense when telomeres get too short, and they 0:14:17.840 --> 0:14:21.280 keep on dividing and dividing and dividing, so they get 0:14:21.360 --> 0:14:26.600 shorter and shorter with each division. Now eventually those cells 0:14:26.640 --> 0:14:30.520 too will die or at least stop replicating because of damage. 0:14:30.560 --> 0:14:34.880 Once you get too damage in your DNA, then you 0:14:34.920 --> 0:14:37.880 just have damaged DNA and that cell can't continue to divide. 0:14:38.040 --> 0:14:42.120 So there has to be something else going on here. Yeah, 0:14:42.480 --> 0:14:47.800 how can this cell line keep dividing indefinitely and truly indefinitely? 0:14:48.920 --> 0:14:51.960 Does it add on length erin? 0:14:52.160 --> 0:14:52.240 It? 0:14:52.400 --> 0:14:57.560 Sure does. Interest turns out there's an entire enzyme group 0:14:57.600 --> 0:15:02.480 of enzymes called tilomera. I don't know if that's the 0:15:02.520 --> 0:15:05.480 proper way to pronounce it, but I think it's close. 0:15:06.040 --> 0:15:12.119 Tilomerase is an enzyme that specifically replicates just those telomere 0:15:12.160 --> 0:15:15.520 sequences to make sure that they are not lost or 0:15:15.600 --> 0:15:20.520 shortened during replication, which allows cells to escape this normal 0:15:20.880 --> 0:15:24.240 What is a normal mechanism that says cells should only 0:15:24.280 --> 0:15:27.200 divide a certain number of times and then stop dividing. 0:15:28.040 --> 0:15:32.080 If you turn telomerase on and you have that enzyme present, 0:15:32.920 --> 0:15:38.600 then these cells will be able to divide forever. And 0:15:38.640 --> 0:15:42.760 as it turns out, over ninety percent of cancer cells, 0:15:43.520 --> 0:15:47.960 most cancer cells have additional mutations beyond just in those 0:15:48.000 --> 0:15:51.440 tumor suppressor genes that we talked about that turn on 0:15:51.720 --> 0:15:54.920 the expression of tilomerase. 0:15:58.120 --> 0:16:03.360 And so tilamera and telomeres also have something to do 0:16:03.440 --> 0:16:08.080 with aging, like the process of aging, because I know, yeah, 0:16:08.120 --> 0:16:11.600 that's what a lot of like anti aging studies or whatever, yes, 0:16:12.120 --> 0:16:12.760 focus on. 0:16:12.960 --> 0:16:15.760 It's thought that they have a large amount to do 0:16:15.880 --> 0:16:20.520 with aging. That like cellular senescence is governed by telomeres 0:16:20.560 --> 0:16:22.720 and like the length of telomeres. 0:16:22.280 --> 0:16:24.800 Right, and so it would make sense that like more 0:16:25.440 --> 0:16:29.800 quote unquote insults to your body through stress or inflammation 0:16:29.920 --> 0:16:33.480 or whatever would lead to more like cells turning over 0:16:33.560 --> 0:16:37.120 more quick rap which leads to faster aging exactly. 0:16:37.320 --> 0:16:40.440 Yeah, at a cellular level, like aging at a cellular level. 0:16:41.200 --> 0:16:44.640 But there's also the downside that it is cancer. 0:16:45.160 --> 0:16:51.000 It is cancer. Interesting, yes, And so that's because Okay, 0:16:51.600 --> 0:16:53.600 I feel like what you're getting at is some really 0:16:53.640 --> 0:17:00.440 interesting things, right, Because the thing about HeLa and many 0:17:00.480 --> 0:17:04.600 of our cell lines is that they have mutations in 0:17:04.760 --> 0:17:10.120 not just tilomerase, right, they have mutations in these other 0:17:11.080 --> 0:17:15.400 properties like P fifty three, like p retinoblastoma, these other 0:17:15.600 --> 0:17:20.199 genes that also control like how rapid the cell grows 0:17:20.280 --> 0:17:23.680 and if it can grow, but still miss other important 0:17:23.720 --> 0:17:27.560 cell cycle checkpoints like that DNA is intact et cetera. 0:17:28.560 --> 0:17:32.160 Tilomerase is separate from all of that m HM. So 0:17:32.320 --> 0:17:36.479 if you could induce just tulomerase, you could, in theory 0:17:36.640 --> 0:17:40.240 get a cell to divide indefinitely that doesn't have the 0:17:40.359 --> 0:17:43.560 other properties of cancers. 0:17:44.000 --> 0:17:46.080 Right, Like, there would still be all of the checks 0:17:46.080 --> 0:17:48.600 in place, except for the fact that the telomeres would 0:17:48.600 --> 0:17:50.119 just not. 0:17:49.440 --> 0:17:52.159 Not shorten exactly right. And so that is actually a 0:17:52.200 --> 0:17:55.760 way that people have started to generate cell lines today. 0:17:56.400 --> 0:18:00.720 Interesting, right, it's are these cell lines prietary? 0:18:01.280 --> 0:18:08.000 Oh? Probably? Yeah, yeah, I mean every cell line that's 0:18:08.040 --> 0:18:14.480 developed it yeawadays yeah, yeah, but yeah, So today we 0:18:14.600 --> 0:18:18.280 have a lot of different cell lines. HeLa was the first, 0:18:18.720 --> 0:18:22.720 but now we have so so so many. We have 0:18:23.040 --> 0:18:29.480 cell lines from mice, from dogs, from humans, from so 0:18:29.560 --> 0:18:34.840 many different animals. We have them from kidney cells, from ovaries, 0:18:35.440 --> 0:18:41.600 from embryos, We have cell lines from so many different 0:18:41.600 --> 0:18:45.880 things that we can use for very specific purposes. And 0:18:46.280 --> 0:18:49.119 because we've learned so much about the cell cycle and 0:18:49.200 --> 0:18:54.200 about these specific controls on what can make a cell immortal, 0:18:54.760 --> 0:18:57.800 we can then create new cell lines. We can use 0:18:57.960 --> 0:19:03.400 viral vectors or engineer virul like HPV to integrate into 0:19:03.440 --> 0:19:07.280 genomes and cause these changes that can then turn a 0:19:07.359 --> 0:19:12.160 normal cell into an immortal cell. Or like I mentioned already, 0:19:12.240 --> 0:19:17.919 we can just induce the production of tulomerace so that 0:19:17.960 --> 0:19:20.840 we can then hopefully keep all of the other normal 0:19:20.920 --> 0:19:26.640 cellular architecture rather than more cancerous architecture that HPV infection 0:19:26.720 --> 0:19:27.200 would cause. 0:19:28.200 --> 0:19:34.720 Interesting, I know, Oh this is kind of tangentially related. 0:19:34.840 --> 0:19:37.720 Okay, but we got a couple. 0:19:37.560 --> 0:19:42.000 Of emails from people reminding us that cervical cancer is 0:19:42.080 --> 0:19:47.320 not one, absolutely, one hundred percent associated with HPV. Yes, 0:19:48.680 --> 0:19:52.159 it's very, very very like the vast vast majority, like 0:19:52.280 --> 0:19:55.480 ninety nine percent, but there are some cases that are 0:19:55.560 --> 0:19:57.320 not caused by HPV. 0:19:57.520 --> 0:20:00.840 Yeah, we should have said that in our intro as 0:20:00.880 --> 0:20:04.000 a correction. But yes, it's like ninety nine point seven 0:20:04.080 --> 0:20:07.240 or ninety nine point nine percent of all cervical cancers 0:20:07.320 --> 0:20:11.920 are known to be associated and caused by HPV. Yes. Yeah, 0:20:12.080 --> 0:20:14.000 So thank you to the people who reached out. 0:20:14.160 --> 0:20:14.760 Yes, thank you. 0:20:15.520 --> 0:20:20.439 Anyways, so back to cell lines. The last thing that 0:20:20.480 --> 0:20:23.240 I want to point out that I think is important 0:20:23.280 --> 0:20:26.000 not only to kind of understand cell culture and cell lines, 0:20:26.040 --> 0:20:29.520 but also because when we kind of talk about the 0:20:29.600 --> 0:20:32.040 current status of cell culture. I want to talk a 0:20:32.080 --> 0:20:36.240 little bit more about it is the difference between an 0:20:36.320 --> 0:20:41.000 immortal cell line and a stem cell HM. So I 0:20:41.040 --> 0:20:43.920 think a lot of times when people hear, especially if 0:20:43.960 --> 0:20:46.479 you don't have a lot of training in biology and 0:20:46.520 --> 0:20:49.920 like don't work with cell cultures all the time, when 0:20:49.960 --> 0:20:52.560 you hear cell culture, a lot of times what people 0:20:52.640 --> 0:20:55.280 think of are stem cells. And I think that's because 0:20:55.560 --> 0:20:58.040 they get a lot of headlines right because they can 0:20:58.080 --> 0:21:04.760 be controversial. So immortal cell lines like HeLa and stem 0:21:04.760 --> 0:21:08.920 cells are not the same. Both are used in scientific research, 0:21:08.960 --> 0:21:13.199 and both are incredibly important, but there's some pretty important differences. 0:21:14.080 --> 0:21:17.760 Immortalized cell lines like HeLa come from what are called 0:21:17.880 --> 0:21:21.080 primary tissues to begin with, which which means they come 0:21:21.160 --> 0:21:24.919 from differentiated like you can think of them as grown 0:21:25.000 --> 0:21:29.080 up cells like kidney cells or macrophages, which are white 0:21:29.080 --> 0:21:33.720 blood cells, or cervical epithelial cancer cells in the case 0:21:33.720 --> 0:21:37.399 of HeLa. So these cells are differentiated, They have a 0:21:37.640 --> 0:21:41.760 particular function in our bodies, They have a specific kind 0:21:41.800 --> 0:21:45.200 of architecture, and so cells from a kidney are going 0:21:45.240 --> 0:21:49.240 to be different than cells from a cervix. And whenever 0:21:49.280 --> 0:21:52.240 these cells divide, even when they do so indefinitely, they 0:21:52.320 --> 0:21:56.520 stay roughly the same. Stem cells, on the other hand, 0:21:57.119 --> 0:22:03.040 are undifferentiated, so these cells have the potential to become 0:22:03.680 --> 0:22:08.800 any or many different cell types, from like a neuron 0:22:09.080 --> 0:22:11.159 to a kidney, to a liver cell, to a muscle 0:22:11.160 --> 0:22:15.800 cell to whatever. Right, So sometimes people describe stem cells 0:22:15.840 --> 0:22:18.439 as like a little kid that has the potential to 0:22:18.520 --> 0:22:20.800 be anything they want to be when they grow up, 0:22:21.200 --> 0:22:24.200 and differentiated cells as a grown up who has one 0:22:24.320 --> 0:22:28.280 job or function. Oh wow, right, I don't be said. 0:22:28.520 --> 0:22:31.320 I don't like that analogy at all, because yeah, it 0:22:31.359 --> 0:22:36.320 can change careers. But anyways, I really tried to come 0:22:36.400 --> 0:22:38.520 up with a better one, and I couldn't, so that's 0:22:38.840 --> 0:22:42.800 that's what I got. But anyways, so that's kind of 0:22:42.840 --> 0:22:47.639 the biggest difference between stem cells and differentiated kind of 0:22:47.720 --> 0:22:51.119 adult cells. There are two different kinds of stem cells 0:22:51.160 --> 0:22:56.080 as well. In humans. There's embryonic stem cells, which are 0:22:56.480 --> 0:23:01.119 like where we began, so a zygote, because embryonic stem 0:23:01.160 --> 0:23:06.040 cells that's how we all formed in utero, and these 0:23:06.080 --> 0:23:10.720 cells can become literally any cell type. They become every 0:23:10.760 --> 0:23:14.800 single cell in our body. But even as grown humans, 0:23:14.920 --> 0:23:18.480 we have stem cells in our bodies as well. They're 0:23:18.520 --> 0:23:22.480 called somatic stem cells, meaning they are in our body 0:23:22.600 --> 0:23:26.840 currently rather than in an embryo. And these are very 0:23:26.840 --> 0:23:30.720 important because they serve to regenerate cells in our body 0:23:30.760 --> 0:23:35.560 that need regeneration. So like in our skin, for example, 0:23:35.680 --> 0:23:38.960 in the basal layer, the very bottom layer, there are 0:23:39.000 --> 0:23:42.840 stem cells that are epidermal stem cells that not only 0:23:42.880 --> 0:23:47.640 continually divide and produce more epidermal stem cells, but they 0:23:47.640 --> 0:23:53.520 can also differentiate into grown up skin cells. Right. And 0:23:53.560 --> 0:23:57.000 then we also have like in our bone marrow, hematopoetic 0:23:57.080 --> 0:24:00.639 stem cells, which can become all of our blood cells, 0:24:00.680 --> 0:24:04.119 red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets. Right. So the 0:24:04.160 --> 0:24:08.320 big difference between embryonic stem cells and most somatic stem 0:24:08.359 --> 0:24:12.760 cells is that these somatic stem cells can only become 0:24:12.880 --> 0:24:16.760 like one or a few different kinds of cells, whereas 0:24:16.760 --> 0:24:18.040 embryonic can become. 0:24:17.840 --> 0:24:20.520 Like literally really anything, right, right. 0:24:20.680 --> 0:24:23.960 So that's just like to keep in mind they're different. 0:24:24.720 --> 0:24:27.760 Most cell lines that we use don't come from embryos 0:24:28.000 --> 0:24:31.879 or embryonic stem cells. They come from differentiated animal or 0:24:32.000 --> 0:24:34.080 human cells. So they come from a piece of tissue 0:24:34.440 --> 0:24:36.400 and then they are made into a cell line. 0:24:36.800 --> 0:24:37.080 M H. 0:24:38.000 --> 0:24:38.359 That's it. 0:24:38.520 --> 0:24:42.240 Aaron do you have any other questions for me about 0:24:42.400 --> 0:24:43.120 cell culture? 0:24:43.920 --> 0:24:48.280 Oh, I'm trying to think so the whole thing about 0:24:48.600 --> 0:24:52.280 there's a limited number of times that a particular cell 0:24:52.320 --> 0:24:55.520 line can or a particular cell can replicate before the 0:24:55.560 --> 0:25:00.280 machinery just shuts down. That's that's the Hayflick limit. Right, Yeah? 0:25:00.520 --> 0:25:00.920 Does that? 0:25:01.280 --> 0:25:04.879 How much does that vary across different cell types? 0:25:05.119 --> 0:25:08.840 Oh, that's a good question. I don't fully know, but 0:25:10.200 --> 0:25:14.840 based on how different cell types function in adult humans, 0:25:14.840 --> 0:25:16.880 I would guess that there's quite a bit of variability, 0:25:17.240 --> 0:25:21.280 and maybe not necessarily in what that limit could theoretically be, 0:25:21.440 --> 0:25:24.000 but at least in what that limit is in a 0:25:24.160 --> 0:25:28.640 normal like human body for example, right, like practice exactly. 0:25:29.119 --> 0:25:31.399 Okay, Yeah, interesting. 0:25:31.480 --> 0:25:37.960 So Aaron, Yes, let's talk about where these cells came from. 0:25:38.280 --> 0:26:06.439 Let's do it. Let's take a quick break first. So, Aaron, 0:26:07.680 --> 0:26:11.080 you have taken us through HeLa cells, what they are, 0:26:11.720 --> 0:26:13.840 some of what they can be used to do, and 0:26:14.119 --> 0:26:18.359 lots of other aspects of tissue culture. But as we know, 0:26:18.840 --> 0:26:22.560 that's just one part of the story of HeLa, right, 0:26:23.160 --> 0:26:26.080 and I feel super lucky that I get to tell 0:26:26.160 --> 0:26:28.199 the rest of that story, or at least like a 0:26:28.240 --> 0:26:30.720 good chunk of it, which is the story of the 0:26:30.760 --> 0:26:35.440 woman behind Thosesells, Henrietta Lacks, and the legacy she has 0:26:35.520 --> 0:26:39.760 left behind, both in terms of scientific achievements, but also 0:26:40.359 --> 0:26:44.879 in raising these important questions of ownership, informed consent, what 0:26:44.960 --> 0:26:49.199 it means to be immortal. Right off the bat, I 0:26:49.240 --> 0:26:51.240 want to say that this is such a big story 0:26:51.400 --> 0:26:55.240 that I can't focus on all of it. But fortunately 0:26:55.280 --> 0:26:58.480 there are other great resources out there, including the book 0:26:58.480 --> 0:27:01.280 where I got most of this information, The Immortal Life 0:27:01.280 --> 0:27:04.480 of Henrietta Lax by Rebecca Sclute, And there's also a 0:27:04.520 --> 0:27:07.560 movie based on the book on HBO. And will of 0:27:07.600 --> 0:27:10.159 course post these resources on our website so you can 0:27:10.200 --> 0:27:14.080 read more. Okay, So, who was Henriette A. 0:27:14.160 --> 0:27:15.240 Lax? Right? 0:27:16.200 --> 0:27:20.120 The answer you would probably come across in most biology textbooks, 0:27:20.480 --> 0:27:23.920 especially ones that were published like let's say fifteen years 0:27:23.960 --> 0:27:28.239 ago or so, is that, in short, Henrietta was a 0:27:28.240 --> 0:27:31.520 black woman who died of cervical cancer in nineteen fifty 0:27:31.520 --> 0:27:34.520 one at the age of thirty one, and from whom 0:27:34.600 --> 0:27:38.760 cells were taken. A lot of books might actually say donated. 0:27:39.960 --> 0:27:44.480 That gave rise to the most ubiquitous immortal cell culture 0:27:44.520 --> 0:27:48.199 line that has been used in every type of scientific 0:27:48.240 --> 0:27:53.240 research you could think of, literally literally, and that alone 0:27:53.520 --> 0:27:57.240 is an incredibly impressive one sentence, maybe like a run 0:27:57.280 --> 0:28:01.080 on sentence a biography, But what it doesn't tell you 0:28:01.200 --> 0:28:03.720 is that she was also a mother, She was a daughter, 0:28:04.000 --> 0:28:07.760 a wife, a friend, a sister, someone who is more 0:28:07.840 --> 0:28:10.199 than just those cells and the legacy that they have 0:28:10.359 --> 0:28:14.440 left and continue to leave behind. One of the themes 0:28:14.480 --> 0:28:18.200 that has come up more than once on this podcast, 0:28:18.400 --> 0:28:22.080 many times on this podcast is the problem with the 0:28:22.160 --> 0:28:27.000 lack of humanity in medicine or science. It's often more 0:28:27.000 --> 0:28:30.000 straightforward or efficient to look for what we can measure 0:28:30.200 --> 0:28:33.360 or observe directly to make a diagnosis or to detect 0:28:33.400 --> 0:28:38.040 patterns within a population. And of course the application of 0:28:38.080 --> 0:28:41.480 the statistical analysis and data collection and the development of 0:28:41.520 --> 0:28:46.760 diagnostic criteria, it's all been hugely beneficial. But you know 0:28:46.880 --> 0:28:51.920 how people say, you can't see the forest for the trees. Yeah, 0:28:51.960 --> 0:28:54.680 this is kind of like the opposite losing sight of 0:28:54.720 --> 0:28:59.080 the trees for the forest. It's so important to remember, 0:28:59.360 --> 0:29:02.800 but way too easy to forget that behind each of 0:29:02.840 --> 0:29:06.480 those data points, behind each person diagnosed with a disease, 0:29:06.680 --> 0:29:09.840 behind each person who makes a discovery or a diagnosis 0:29:10.320 --> 0:29:13.240 is a human being with an entire history and life 0:29:13.360 --> 0:29:17.640 of their own. And I think keeping that humanity in 0:29:17.720 --> 0:29:21.520 science and seeing both the forest and the trees probably 0:29:21.560 --> 0:29:24.560 makes you a better scientist and a better physician and 0:29:24.640 --> 0:29:29.160 probably just a better human overall. And that's a big 0:29:29.200 --> 0:29:33.040 reason kind of why we include these first hand accounts 0:29:33.080 --> 0:29:36.640 in our episodes, to ground these topics in real life, 0:29:36.720 --> 0:29:41.160 to remind ourselves and hopefully listeners that, like, these diseases 0:29:41.200 --> 0:29:44.480 don't happen just like in a textbook, like they happen 0:29:44.560 --> 0:29:49.480 to real people. People experience them. And that's also why 0:29:49.520 --> 0:29:52.480 for this episode, rather than including a first hand account, 0:29:52.600 --> 0:29:56.280 we wanted to focus just this almost this whole history 0:29:56.320 --> 0:30:00.600 section on this person, on the first hand account on 0:30:00.680 --> 0:30:02.720 the person behind these HeLa cells. 0:30:02.960 --> 0:30:05.120 Yeah, that's we weren't lying when we said this is 0:30:05.120 --> 0:30:06.440 a very different episode. 0:30:06.680 --> 0:30:11.640 Yeah, So who was HeLa? We keep saying HeLa, HeLa 0:30:11.960 --> 0:30:16.440 H E like capital H, lowercase E, capital L lowercase A. 0:30:17.560 --> 0:30:21.080 HeLa stands for Henrietta Lax, the first two letters of 0:30:21.080 --> 0:30:25.600 her first and last name. Henrietta Lax was born Loretta 0:30:25.640 --> 0:30:30.840 Pleasant in Roanoke, Virginia, on August first, nineteen twenty. Henriette 0:30:30.920 --> 0:30:34.120 was only four when her mother, Eliza died, and to 0:30:34.160 --> 0:30:37.800 help take care of Henrietta and her nine siblings, her 0:30:37.840 --> 0:30:41.880 father Johnny brought the family to Clover, Virginia, where Henrietta 0:30:41.960 --> 0:30:46.920 lived with her grandfather, Tommy Lax. Johnny's family had lived 0:30:47.000 --> 0:30:50.440 in Clover for decades. His ancestors had farmed the land 0:30:50.480 --> 0:30:54.560 while enslaved, and they continued to farm tobacco after slavery ended. 0:30:55.240 --> 0:30:59.120 Henrietta spent her childhood working on the farm, milking cows, 0:30:59.200 --> 0:31:03.160 feeding chickens, taking care of the pigs and horses, planting 0:31:03.200 --> 0:31:07.840 and collecting tobacco leaves. Getting to school wasn't as simple 0:31:07.960 --> 0:31:11.200 as hopping on a bus. It was a long two 0:31:11.240 --> 0:31:15.480 mile walk each way, and Henrietta made that walk every 0:31:15.560 --> 0:31:18.760 day through sixth grade. In her free time, she and 0:31:18.800 --> 0:31:21.880 her cousins would swim in the swimming hole, or play 0:31:21.960 --> 0:31:25.000 tag or hopscotch. Or they would take their earnings and 0:31:25.040 --> 0:31:27.440 go to the movie theater, where they would watch black 0:31:27.480 --> 0:31:30.880 and white movies, sitting the only place they were allowed, 0:31:31.040 --> 0:31:35.640 which was in the colored section. Henrietta's friends described her 0:31:35.840 --> 0:31:39.520 as lively and tough, someone who always stood her ground, 0:31:40.040 --> 0:31:43.200 but also someone who was warm and sweet and generous, 0:31:43.720 --> 0:31:46.800 the person who made you see life in technicolor when 0:31:46.800 --> 0:31:51.160 you were around her. When she was twenty, Henrietta married 0:31:51.240 --> 0:31:54.840 David or Day Lax. Over the course of their relationship, 0:31:55.000 --> 0:32:01.080 they would have five children, Lawrence, Elsie, David or Sonny, Deborah, 0:32:01.120 --> 0:32:06.080 and Zakaria born Joseph. Not long after getting married, Henrietta 0:32:06.120 --> 0:32:08.760 and Day moved up to Baltimore, where there was a 0:32:08.880 --> 0:32:11.959 huge boom in industrial jobs now that the US had 0:32:12.080 --> 0:32:16.200 entered into World War Two. Henrietta didn't love living in 0:32:16.280 --> 0:32:18.880 Baltimore in the city, so she would take the kids 0:32:18.960 --> 0:32:21.480 back to Clover as often as she could, which was 0:32:21.560 --> 0:32:25.520 most every weekend, and among her friends and family, Henrietta 0:32:25.640 --> 0:32:29.320 was known for being an amazing cook, spending hours every 0:32:29.400 --> 0:32:32.840 day putting together rice pudding or slow cooked greens, or 0:32:32.880 --> 0:32:36.239 spaghetti and meatballs, cooking tons and tons of foods so 0:32:36.320 --> 0:32:38.360 she could feed her kids and her husband, as well 0:32:38.400 --> 0:32:42.360 as whatever cousins happened to stop by. In the evenings, 0:32:42.400 --> 0:32:44.920 she and Day would play cards and listen to music 0:32:45.000 --> 0:32:47.840 if he was off work, and if he wasn't, she 0:32:47.880 --> 0:32:51.520 would often go out dancing with her friend Sadie. But 0:32:51.640 --> 0:32:55.280 life for Henrietta wasn't always this house full of delicious 0:32:55.280 --> 0:32:58.800 food or nights out dancing. There were also some incredibly 0:32:58.840 --> 0:33:02.800 tough times, like when she took her daughter Elsie to 0:33:02.960 --> 0:33:05.920 Crownsville State Hospital, which used to be known as the 0:33:05.960 --> 0:33:10.479 Hospital for the negro Insane. Elsie, who was deaf and 0:33:10.560 --> 0:33:13.680 seemed to suffer from epilepsy, would die in that hospital 0:33:13.680 --> 0:33:17.280 when she was fifteen, which was after Henrietta died, but 0:33:17.440 --> 0:33:21.800 Henrietta's family talked about how dropping Elsie off there was 0:33:21.880 --> 0:33:25.440 one of the most difficult times for Henrietta, something that 0:33:25.480 --> 0:33:29.560 she never quite recovered from, and so for ten years 0:33:29.840 --> 0:33:33.440 Henrietta and her family lived in Baltimore through these ups 0:33:33.440 --> 0:33:37.800 and downs, and then one cold and rainy January day 0:33:37.880 --> 0:33:42.600 in nineteen fifty one day drove Henrietta to Johns Hopkins Hospital, 0:33:42.920 --> 0:33:45.160 where she had an appointment to check out what she 0:33:45.320 --> 0:33:48.360 called a knot on her womb. Just a few months 0:33:48.360 --> 0:33:51.360 before this appointment, she had been at the same hospital 0:33:51.400 --> 0:33:54.400 where she had given birth to Zacharia, but there was 0:33:54.520 --> 0:33:57.960 no note left behind about this knot or lump, or 0:33:58.000 --> 0:34:01.200 any sort of cervical lesion or regular larity. But she 0:34:01.520 --> 0:34:04.200 knew that there was something there, something that was causing 0:34:04.240 --> 0:34:07.440 her a lot of pain and irregular bleeding. She saw 0:34:07.480 --> 0:34:10.759 a local doctor first, who said it was a syphilis sore, 0:34:11.320 --> 0:34:14.600 but the test came back negative, and so he recommended 0:34:14.719 --> 0:34:17.279 that she had all the way to Johns Hopkins, which 0:34:17.360 --> 0:34:20.920 is a twenty mile drive, And there wasn't anything particularly 0:34:21.000 --> 0:34:24.560 special about Johns Hopkins itself. It was just that the 0:34:24.640 --> 0:34:27.960 other major hospitals that were closer wouldn't treat black people, 0:34:29.000 --> 0:34:34.400 even Johns Hopkins was segregated. At Hopkins, she was seen 0:34:34.440 --> 0:34:38.080 by gynecologist Howard Jones, who took note of the pain 0:34:38.120 --> 0:34:41.360 that she described, the bleeding in between periods, and the 0:34:41.400 --> 0:34:43.719 fact that she felt a lump on the neck of 0:34:43.760 --> 0:34:47.520 her womb. And when he examined her, he found the 0:34:47.600 --> 0:34:51.160 lump that she mentioned, which he described as a cervical tumor, 0:34:51.760 --> 0:34:55.319 one unlike any he had ever seen before and he 0:34:55.360 --> 0:34:58.600 would never see the likes of again. It was a 0:34:58.680 --> 0:35:02.319 hard mass about the side a nickel, but unlike other 0:35:02.400 --> 0:35:06.560 cervical lesions, this was shiny and purple. He compared it 0:35:06.600 --> 0:35:11.200 to grape jello. And it bled so easily, like just 0:35:11.239 --> 0:35:15.839 with the smallest sort of like poking. Yeah, he cut 0:35:15.880 --> 0:35:18.480 off a little bit for a biopsy and told Henrietta 0:35:18.560 --> 0:35:21.200 to go home and wait for an answer, and she 0:35:21.239 --> 0:35:24.000 didn't have to wait long. A few days later, on 0:35:24.040 --> 0:35:27.880 February fifth, nineteen fifty one, Henrietta received the news that 0:35:27.920 --> 0:35:30.840 the tumor on her cervix was malignant and that she 0:35:30.880 --> 0:35:33.840 would have to return to the hospital for treatment, which 0:35:34.040 --> 0:35:38.160 at the time consisted of radium tubes being stitched into 0:35:38.200 --> 0:35:43.759 the tumor and nearby tissue, which sounds incredibly painful. So 0:35:43.840 --> 0:35:46.719 the next day she was back in the hospital undergoing 0:35:46.840 --> 0:35:53.200 this painful procedure. Fortunately, while unconscious under anesthesia and during 0:35:53.200 --> 0:35:58.200 this procedure, the surgeon, Lawrence Wharton Junior, sliced two dime 0:35:58.280 --> 0:36:02.239 sized pieces of tissue from rietta cervix, one from the 0:36:02.280 --> 0:36:04.520 region where there was a tumor and the other from 0:36:04.520 --> 0:36:08.000 the unaffected region. Dime size seems big. 0:36:07.760 --> 0:36:09.800 But it does seem big, yeah. 0:36:10.680 --> 0:36:13.400 He then packaged these up to be sent to a 0:36:13.400 --> 0:36:16.319 tissue culture lab run by a guy named George Guy, 0:36:16.800 --> 0:36:19.520 where they were then processed by a lab employee named 0:36:19.600 --> 0:36:23.600 Mary kubachk. Mary cut up the tissue into tiny, tiny 0:36:23.600 --> 0:36:27.360 bits and placed them into culture tubes with nutritional broth, 0:36:27.840 --> 0:36:30.279 making sure to keep the tumor tissue separate from the 0:36:30.320 --> 0:36:34.600 normal tissue. She labeled the tub's hila the first two letters, 0:36:34.640 --> 0:36:37.080 like I said, of Henrietta Lack's first and last name, 0:36:37.440 --> 0:36:40.080 and that was the standard naming procedure in the lab. 0:36:41.360 --> 0:36:44.840 Mary didn't expect much to happen, honestly, because the lab 0:36:44.880 --> 0:36:48.280 had worked on cell culture for years and the highly 0:36:48.360 --> 0:36:51.800 sought after immortal human cell line was beginning to feel 0:36:51.840 --> 0:36:52.600 like a pipe dream. 0:36:53.320 --> 0:36:57.480 It's so, can I ask a question? Yeah? So was 0:36:57.520 --> 0:37:02.040 this a lab that like they were just taking samples 0:37:02.040 --> 0:37:05.400 from everyone, just trying to grow cells unsuccessfully? 0:37:05.640 --> 0:37:05.920 Yeah? 0:37:06.160 --> 0:37:10.879 Okay, okay, yeah, I mean, and tissue culture had kind 0:37:10.880 --> 0:37:13.839 of like fallen out of fashion for a while, and 0:37:13.880 --> 0:37:16.600 so this like this lab was kind. 0:37:16.520 --> 0:37:19.000 Of one of the main ones still working on it, 0:37:19.040 --> 0:37:22.600 still trying, Yeah, because it seemed hopeless to find, you know, 0:37:22.719 --> 0:37:25.120 this like immortal cell line where you could actually do 0:37:25.200 --> 0:37:28.400 sustained research on a particular cell. 0:37:28.480 --> 0:37:34.360 Yeah. And was it kind of standard practice that surgeons 0:37:34.400 --> 0:37:38.560 would take samples of everyone that they were operating. Yes, absolutely. 0:37:38.600 --> 0:37:41.320 So that's that's what's sort of the interesting thing, and 0:37:42.440 --> 0:37:45.760 it's also what surprised me, and I to be honest 0:37:45.760 --> 0:37:49.320 of that. In the Immortal Life book, which was published 0:37:49.320 --> 0:37:52.840 in twenty ten, I believe, I'm not sure whether anything 0:37:52.840 --> 0:37:55.200 has changed, but at least according to that book, like 0:37:55.360 --> 0:37:58.880 a lot of the you know, ownership of tissue and 0:38:00.080 --> 0:38:02.680 in the operating room, like once that tissue is removed 0:38:02.719 --> 0:38:05.040 from your body, whether it's your appendix, whether it's whatever, 0:38:05.160 --> 0:38:08.319 that no longer belongs to you, and you as an 0:38:08.360 --> 0:38:12.800 individual can't. Like there's been a lot of legal battles 0:38:12.840 --> 0:38:16.840 over the ownership of cell lines, and what seems to 0:38:16.880 --> 0:38:19.120 be the case is that an individual cannot own their 0:38:19.120 --> 0:38:22.360 own cell lines, which I think is very interesting unless 0:38:22.400 --> 0:38:25.200 you were, like were scientists, and you've developed it yourself. 0:38:24.920 --> 0:38:27.239 You develop your own cell line, then you can, but 0:38:27.360 --> 0:38:29.360 if someone takes it from you. 0:38:29.840 --> 0:38:31.319 Right anyway? 0:38:31.640 --> 0:38:31.879 Yeah? 0:38:32.239 --> 0:38:38.600 Sorry, so yeah and so yeah, George and his wife 0:38:38.800 --> 0:38:44.440 Margaret had worked for years and years for an immortal 0:38:44.480 --> 0:38:47.880 cell line. Wait they were married, yes? Oh so so 0:38:48.080 --> 0:38:52.000 Margaret different than Mary? Oh yeah, but Margaret also worked 0:38:52.000 --> 0:38:55.400 in the lab. Yeah, okay, okay, And apparently an immortal 0:38:55.440 --> 0:38:59.160 cell line had been found before using my cells. But 0:38:59.280 --> 0:39:02.080 the guys didn't want my cells. They wanted to achieve 0:39:02.160 --> 0:39:05.680 this with human cells, and so they tried and failed, 0:39:05.719 --> 0:39:08.440 and they tried and failed for thirty years. 0:39:09.000 --> 0:39:09.440 Wow. 0:39:09.880 --> 0:39:12.920 So you asked, where did they get all of this 0:39:13.560 --> 0:39:14.560 to shoot to try on? 0:39:15.040 --> 0:39:15.440 Yeah? 0:39:15.520 --> 0:39:19.000 Yeah, I mean quote unquote donation, right, Like, so they 0:39:19.040 --> 0:39:22.440 would partner with different physicians or surgeons who would take 0:39:22.480 --> 0:39:25.680 it from a patient, and way more often than not. 0:39:25.880 --> 0:39:27.960 I mean it was like the standard rule was to 0:39:28.000 --> 0:39:31.799 do this without the patient's knowledge, without their consent, and 0:39:32.120 --> 0:39:35.640 that was the common practice at the time. I think 0:39:35.680 --> 0:39:39.120 that there are some different consent rules today in terms 0:39:39.160 --> 0:39:40.879 of like, but I don't think it's I don't think 0:39:40.880 --> 0:39:42.520 you are legally requite you got it. 0:39:42.719 --> 0:39:43.880 I'll talk a little bit more about it. 0:39:43.880 --> 0:39:49.280 Okay, good, Okay, it's surprisingly correct me if I'm wrong. 0:39:49.480 --> 0:39:50.759 Not that different. 0:39:50.480 --> 0:39:52.880 Today, it's not Aaron. 0:39:53.360 --> 0:39:53.640 Yeah. 0:39:54.960 --> 0:40:01.319 Yeah. So anyway, one of the doctors that George guy 0:40:01.360 --> 0:40:05.240 had partnered with was this guy named Richard Ti Lind 0:40:05.880 --> 0:40:08.560 who was a gynecologist trying to get to the bottom 0:40:08.719 --> 0:40:12.560 of whether or not in C two cervical cancer posed 0:40:12.560 --> 0:40:15.399 a threat and could become invasive or whether it would 0:40:15.400 --> 0:40:17.880 just remain in place. So we talked a little bit 0:40:17.920 --> 0:40:21.880 about this discussion in our HPV episode. Right yeah, and 0:40:22.000 --> 0:40:25.640 Ti Lind was firmly in the inc two cancers are 0:40:25.680 --> 0:40:29.120 pre cancers and super dangerous camp. So he was like, Okay, 0:40:29.200 --> 0:40:32.319 if only I can compare the cell types of these 0:40:32.360 --> 0:40:36.520 two cancers alongside normal cervical cells, I can show that 0:40:36.560 --> 0:40:38.759 I've been right all along and that all of these 0:40:38.800 --> 0:40:42.920 hysterectomies I've performed were not unwarranted. So he was like 0:40:42.960 --> 0:40:45.560 a big you know, Oh there's cancer. We're going to 0:40:45.600 --> 0:40:47.840 do a history and to cut the whole thing out. Yeah, yeah, exactly. 0:40:48.760 --> 0:40:51.439 And so he formed a deal with George Guy where 0:40:51.440 --> 0:40:54.520 he would provide Guy with cervical cancer tissue from his patients, 0:40:55.000 --> 0:40:56.880 and Guy would try to culture the cells. 0:40:57.160 --> 0:40:58.920 Okay, it's all coming together. 0:40:59.200 --> 0:41:02.760 Here we go. Any person who walked into Johns Hopkins 0:41:02.840 --> 0:41:05.520 and was diagnosed with cervical cancer would have a tiny 0:41:05.560 --> 0:41:08.239 bit of their tissue sent off to George Guy's lab 0:41:08.360 --> 0:41:13.360 without their knowledge, needless to sa ignore their consent. Okay, 0:41:14.880 --> 0:41:19.239 one of these people was Henrietta Lax. So back to 0:41:19.280 --> 0:41:23.399 Henrietta cells in a lab. Usually, what happened next, and 0:41:23.520 --> 0:41:26.800 what Mary certainly expected to happen, was that the cells 0:41:26.800 --> 0:41:29.399 in these tubes would maybe hang on for a few 0:41:29.480 --> 0:41:34.040 days at most, but would eventually die. Yeah, and this 0:41:34.080 --> 0:41:37.640 is exactly what did happen to the bits of tissue 0:41:37.680 --> 0:41:43.279 taken from the unaffected region of Henrietta cervix. But it 0:41:43.400 --> 0:41:48.359 didn't happen, not even close to the bits of cancerous tissue. 0:41:48.560 --> 0:41:51.280 The cells in those tubes didn't just hang in there. 0:41:51.400 --> 0:41:55.080 They grew and they grew and they grew. Mary had 0:41:55.160 --> 0:41:58.399 never seen anything like it before, and she hurried off 0:41:58.400 --> 0:42:01.480 to tell George. After hearing the news from Mary, it 0:42:01.520 --> 0:42:05.200 occurred to him that this could be what they've been 0:42:05.239 --> 0:42:09.160 looking for all of those decades, finally an immortal cell line, 0:42:10.040 --> 0:42:14.239 and he wasn't shy about his discovery. He made an 0:42:14.280 --> 0:42:17.880 announcement on television, holding up a tube of cells that 0:42:17.960 --> 0:42:22.480 he promised would help conquer cancer. He told his colleagues, 0:42:22.520 --> 0:42:24.880 who asked him to send them some of the cells, 0:42:24.920 --> 0:42:27.319 that they could play around with them, and then when 0:42:27.320 --> 0:42:30.000 they received the cells, they in turn grew more and 0:42:30.080 --> 0:42:33.399 sent those around the world. But as the news of 0:42:33.480 --> 0:42:37.080 this immortal human cell line called Hilo was spreading among 0:42:37.120 --> 0:42:41.400 the medical community, not just at Johns Hopkins, but seriously 0:42:41.560 --> 0:42:45.640 around the world, there was one person who knew nothing 0:42:45.719 --> 0:42:49.320 about it, the person whose name was on those cells, 0:42:49.880 --> 0:42:53.000 the person from whom they had been taken, Henrietta Lacks. 0:42:54.320 --> 0:42:57.680 By the time Guy had made his television appearance, Henrietta 0:42:57.800 --> 0:43:01.440 had returned home from the hospital, and although initially she 0:43:01.520 --> 0:43:04.480 seemed to be getting better from the radium treatments, the 0:43:04.520 --> 0:43:08.879 improvements didn't last. Over the next several months, Henrietta grew 0:43:08.920 --> 0:43:12.360 weaker and felt aches and pains in her abdomen. She 0:43:12.480 --> 0:43:15.759 hid it well, though, with just her husband and a 0:43:15.800 --> 0:43:18.640 few of her friends and cousins in the know, but 0:43:19.040 --> 0:43:21.600 then she took a turn for the worse. Follow Up 0:43:21.600 --> 0:43:24.960 doctor's visits had found a mass attached to repelvic wall 0:43:25.400 --> 0:43:29.720 and tumors on her uterus, kidneys, and urethra. Her pain 0:43:30.200 --> 0:43:35.120 was unbearable to the point where she just couldn't hide 0:43:35.160 --> 0:43:40.319 it anymore, and her doctors wrote that treatment was not 0:43:40.880 --> 0:43:44.520 really possible. The tumors were inoperable and pain relief was 0:43:44.520 --> 0:43:47.520 the only option, which was for the most part, seemed 0:43:47.520 --> 0:43:52.360 to be ineffective. During one of these doctor's visits, actually 0:43:52.680 --> 0:43:55.160 to Lynd tried to take more of the tissue from 0:43:55.280 --> 0:43:59.759 Henrietta cervix again without her consent or knowledge, but it 0:43:59.800 --> 0:44:02.640 was too full of toxins due to her advanced disease, 0:44:02.760 --> 0:44:06.840 and the cells died in culture. Henrietta spent the last 0:44:06.920 --> 0:44:10.440 month of her life in the hospital at Johns Hopkins, 0:44:10.480 --> 0:44:15.600 dealing with unbearable pain, high fevers, nausea, and new tumors 0:44:15.600 --> 0:44:19.800 that seemed to appear daily. When Day brought the children 0:44:19.840 --> 0:44:22.600 to visit, she watched them through the window until she 0:44:22.719 --> 0:44:26.600 was unable to get out of bed anymore. And on 0:44:26.640 --> 0:44:32.280 October fourth, nineteen fifty one, Henrietta Lax died, and while 0:44:32.320 --> 0:44:35.280 her family and friends saw it as an occasion for mourning, 0:44:35.600 --> 0:44:38.960 George Guy saw it as an opportunity to collect more 0:44:39.000 --> 0:44:42.200 samples from this woman who produced the first immortal cell 0:44:42.280 --> 0:44:49.479 culture line what it was. Yeah, So he asked Day 0:44:49.680 --> 0:44:54.400 for permission for an autopsy without making it explicit that 0:44:54.440 --> 0:44:56.960 they wanted more samples from her, or that they got 0:44:57.000 --> 0:44:58.480 samples from her in the first place. 0:44:58.600 --> 0:44:59.280 The first place. 0:44:59.440 --> 0:45:03.440 Yeah, And I think what's interesting about this is that 0:45:03.520 --> 0:45:06.240 while it was legal at this time to take tissue 0:45:06.239 --> 0:45:09.319 from a living person without their consent, it was not 0:45:09.480 --> 0:45:12.400 legal to perform an autopsy or take tissue from the 0:45:12.440 --> 0:45:13.959 deceased without consent. 0:45:14.200 --> 0:45:17.240 Right, and that's still true. Like the rules that govern 0:45:17.400 --> 0:45:20.480 what you can do with tissues from a dead body 0:45:20.560 --> 0:45:21.839 are very. 0:45:21.520 --> 0:45:25.000 Strict, right they are, but they're not as strict for 0:45:25.200 --> 0:45:28.279 those that are living, which is just fascinating. 0:45:28.480 --> 0:45:30.040 It's so bizarre. 0:45:30.280 --> 0:45:35.560 Yeah, and at first day said no way, but they 0:45:35.600 --> 0:45:38.400 asked again when he came to the hospital, and he 0:45:38.480 --> 0:45:43.080 finally agreed to a partial autopsy. Mary Kubachak, who first 0:45:43.120 --> 0:45:46.520 cultured Henrietta cells, stood next to the pathologist as he 0:45:46.600 --> 0:45:53.440 cut samples from Henriette's bladder, bowel, uterus, kidney, vagina, ovary, appendix, liver, heart, lungs, 0:45:53.480 --> 0:45:57.319 and of course cervix, placing them into Petrie dishes for 0:45:57.400 --> 0:46:02.759 later research. Finally, the autopsy was complete and Henrietta was 0:46:03.000 --> 0:46:07.640 allowed to rest. She was buried in the cemetery behind 0:46:07.640 --> 0:46:11.160 the house where she grew up in Clover. But as 0:46:11.200 --> 0:46:14.759 we know, just because Henrietta stopped living doesn't mean she 0:46:14.840 --> 0:46:20.000 stopped impacting people's lives. There's this quote by someone named 0:46:20.080 --> 0:46:23.759 Irvin Yallom, where the basic gist of it is that 0:46:24.120 --> 0:46:28.080 everybody dies twice, the first being like your actual death, 0:46:28.560 --> 0:46:32.960 and the second when the last person who knows you dies. Yeah, 0:46:33.000 --> 0:46:36.560 and if that's the case, Henrietta's memory will be carried 0:46:36.600 --> 0:46:40.320 on for a very long time, in part due to 0:46:40.360 --> 0:46:43.719 the important conversations that have taken place because of her 0:46:43.880 --> 0:46:47.239 quote unquote donation and this question of consent, and in 0:46:47.280 --> 0:46:50.200 part because of the many people who have done so 0:46:50.360 --> 0:46:54.480 much to bring awareness to her life and experiences, and 0:46:54.480 --> 0:46:58.239 another part, again due to the incredible achievements made possible 0:46:58.440 --> 0:47:02.399 by HeLa cells. So let's talk a little bit about those. 0:47:02.800 --> 0:47:04.400 Yes, let's so. 0:47:04.600 --> 0:47:08.200 As I mentioned, even before Henrietta died, her cells were 0:47:08.239 --> 0:47:11.319 being sent all over the world to laboratories, not just 0:47:11.400 --> 0:47:16.319 in biomedical science, but chemistry, physics, engineering, I mean, you 0:47:16.480 --> 0:47:19.080 name it, like you said, any kind of research you 0:47:19.120 --> 0:47:22.080 could imagine, for sure HeLa cells. 0:47:21.880 --> 0:47:24.080 Have been involved. Yeah, definitely. 0:47:24.920 --> 0:47:27.640 And even though the cells were pretty easy to maintain 0:47:27.680 --> 0:47:32.920 in the lab, demand still outpaced supply, like by a lot. 0:47:33.040 --> 0:47:36.440 In nineteen fifty two, the United States experienced the worst 0:47:36.440 --> 0:47:40.160 polio outbreak in the nation's history, with thousands killed and 0:47:40.239 --> 0:47:44.800 tens of thousands left paralyzed, and everyone demanding a vaccine 0:47:44.800 --> 0:47:47.800 for the disease. And even though there were many people 0:47:47.840 --> 0:47:51.400 researching a polio vaccine, as we know from our polio 0:47:51.480 --> 0:47:55.080 episode Back all the Way in Season one, A Long 0:47:55.120 --> 0:47:59.680 time Ago, Long time Ago. Progress was slow because the 0:47:59.760 --> 0:48:02.359 viral rus was difficult to grow in cell culture and 0:48:02.560 --> 0:48:06.600 often had to be grown in live monkeys. That is 0:48:06.800 --> 0:48:10.640 until HeLa cells came along wow which were found to 0:48:10.680 --> 0:48:14.879 be able to be infected with poliovirus. A massive cell 0:48:14.920 --> 0:48:18.760 production laboratory was set up at Tuskegee University, the first 0:48:18.800 --> 0:48:22.120 of its kind. At first, the cells that were produced 0:48:22.120 --> 0:48:25.440 here were pretty much only for polio research, but eventually, 0:48:25.440 --> 0:48:27.680 when it became apparent that there was not going to 0:48:27.680 --> 0:48:31.000 be a shortage of HeLa cells, the Tuskegee Center began 0:48:31.120 --> 0:48:33.839 sending the cells not just to polio labs, but to 0:48:33.960 --> 0:48:37.879 anyone who wanted to use the cells to study basically anything. 0:48:38.160 --> 0:48:42.360 Ten dollars a sample plus air express fees. These cells 0:48:42.920 --> 0:48:47.040 were soon used to study all kinds of viruses, to 0:48:47.160 --> 0:48:50.600 develop and standardized tissue culture techniques, to work on best 0:48:50.600 --> 0:48:54.360 practices for freezing and storing cells, and so much more. Aaron, 0:48:54.360 --> 0:48:57.800 you went into a bunch of the things. And it's funny. 0:48:57.800 --> 0:48:59.960 When I was planning on this episode, I was like, oh, 0:49:00.000 --> 0:49:02.440 I'm going to go through all the things that they accomplished, like, 0:49:02.440 --> 0:49:05.080 there's no way to even begin to list them. 0:49:05.600 --> 0:49:07.640 It's yeah. 0:49:07.680 --> 0:49:10.520 And this early work though, using helo cells helped to 0:49:10.600 --> 0:49:13.560 build the foundation of a field that would later go 0:49:13.680 --> 0:49:17.399 on to allow for stem cell isolation, cloning of whole 0:49:17.480 --> 0:49:22.319 animals in vitro fertilization. The study of helo cells also 0:49:22.480 --> 0:49:25.080 led to the discovery that there weren't forty eight, but 0:49:25.200 --> 0:49:29.759 rather forty six human chromosomes, and then this then led 0:49:29.800 --> 0:49:32.480 to the growth of the field of diagnosis of genetic 0:49:32.560 --> 0:49:37.360 diseases involving chromosome abnormalities such as Down syndrome or Kleinfelter 0:49:37.480 --> 0:49:43.040 syndrome or Turner syndrome. Wow. Yeah. Helo cells were blasted 0:49:43.040 --> 0:49:45.360 with radiation during the Cold War to look at the 0:49:45.360 --> 0:49:49.040 effects of radiation on a cellular level, or they were 0:49:49.120 --> 0:49:54.960 used to observe the effects of steroids, hormones, vitamins, cancer, stressors, bacteria. Basically, 0:49:55.040 --> 0:49:57.799 if you can think of a biomedical or really any 0:49:57.880 --> 0:50:01.680 kind of research topic, helo cells were there as part 0:50:01.680 --> 0:50:05.560 of it. It was clear that the application of HeLa 0:50:05.600 --> 0:50:10.560 cells in biomedical research was basically endless, and soon the 0:50:10.600 --> 0:50:14.719 demand for the cells once again outpaced the production capacity 0:50:14.880 --> 0:50:20.440 of Tuskegee. So a new company was started, Microbiological Associates, 0:50:20.880 --> 0:50:25.239 which shipped out Henrietta's cells to whoever could pay. And 0:50:25.600 --> 0:50:29.040 even though you probably would have guessed this already, all 0:50:29.080 --> 0:50:31.759 note that no one in the Lax family had been 0:50:31.800 --> 0:50:35.719 told about this endeavor, much less given any compensation for 0:50:35.800 --> 0:50:39.160 the industry that had grown out of the cells taken 0:50:39.200 --> 0:50:43.120 from Henrietta without her consent. At this point, the excitement 0:50:43.160 --> 0:50:47.520 around Henrietta's cells had grown beyond just what people were 0:50:47.600 --> 0:50:50.720 using them to do research on the public had started 0:50:50.760 --> 0:50:54.680 to learn about them as well. News articles began appearing 0:50:54.719 --> 0:50:57.719 about the cells, but these articles didn't focus just on 0:50:57.760 --> 0:51:01.960 the scientific achievements made possible by HeLa cells. They also 0:51:02.000 --> 0:51:06.400 wanted to talk about the woman herself. But this presented 0:51:06.440 --> 0:51:09.040 an issue for the doctors who took and used her 0:51:09.080 --> 0:51:12.680 cells without her permission, using her real name, and the 0:51:12.760 --> 0:51:15.960 article would not only link the Lax family to those cells, 0:51:16.160 --> 0:51:19.920 meaning whatever genetic or cellular information that arose from this 0:51:20.000 --> 0:51:24.600 research could be tied to them. But another reason, and 0:51:24.760 --> 0:51:28.120 maybe the real reason that Tilland and Guy cared was 0:51:28.200 --> 0:51:31.080 because it meant that the Lax family would also then 0:51:31.280 --> 0:51:34.960 learn that Henrietta cells were taken without her permission to 0:51:35.040 --> 0:51:40.320 create a profitable industry. The laws at the time weren't 0:51:40.360 --> 0:51:43.800 as protective of a patient's rights as they were today, 0:51:43.880 --> 0:51:47.440 even though it's only marginally more in terms of informed 0:51:47.440 --> 0:51:51.879 consent and patient confidentiality, but it was still clear at 0:51:51.880 --> 0:51:55.360 that point that that's where the laws were headed, and 0:51:55.400 --> 0:51:59.760 as a compromise, the editors of some of these articles 0:51:59.800 --> 0:52:04.759 agreed to change her name Henrietta's name to Helen Ell 0:52:05.680 --> 0:52:07.840 and it was also said in this article that the 0:52:07.880 --> 0:52:12.040 tissue was taken from her after her death, and so 0:52:12.239 --> 0:52:14.719 from this article on this was like one of the 0:52:14.719 --> 0:52:18.480 first articles about Henrietta and the fact that they were 0:52:18.480 --> 0:52:22.600 her cells. Henrietta Lax would be changed to Helen Lane 0:52:22.719 --> 0:52:26.680 or Helen Larsen, leaving her family in the dark about 0:52:26.719 --> 0:52:29.920 the existence of her cells. But even if the Lax 0:52:29.960 --> 0:52:33.040 family didn't know about the cells and their connection to them, 0:52:33.600 --> 0:52:36.719 many researchers did, and they would soon be knocking at 0:52:36.719 --> 0:52:41.640 the door. By nineteen sixty six, HeLa cells had been 0:52:41.800 --> 0:52:44.800 in use in all kinds of research for fifteen years, 0:52:45.160 --> 0:52:48.920 and cell culture technology had also greatly advanced, with the 0:52:48.960 --> 0:52:53.320 isolation of many other different cell lines. But then came 0:52:54.000 --> 0:52:56.200 what I think in the book was referred to as 0:52:56.280 --> 0:53:00.759 the HeLa bomb. In nineteen sixty six, it was suggested 0:53:00.920 --> 0:53:04.000 that many of the different human cell lines that scientists 0:53:04.080 --> 0:53:08.200 believe they had isolated and conducted research on were actually 0:53:08.320 --> 0:53:14.120 HeLa contaminated, meaning that HeLa had taken over them, meaning 0:53:14.239 --> 0:53:19.800 that they weren't what they had what they thought they were. Yeah, 0:53:20.200 --> 0:53:24.920 and so this, like I guess, vigorous quality of HeLa 0:53:25.040 --> 0:53:29.400 cells had long been known, but this massive takeover was 0:53:29.440 --> 0:53:32.799 on a whole other level because if this were true, 0:53:33.440 --> 0:53:36.560 that meant millions of dollars of research money and years 0:53:36.600 --> 0:53:40.279 of research were essentially wasted because they were done on 0:53:40.400 --> 0:53:45.200 cells with properties that may not have been there. 0:53:45.560 --> 0:53:47.880 Right, Yeah, like you thought that you were working with 0:53:48.960 --> 0:53:51.560 kidney and you were working with HeLa exactly. 0:53:51.880 --> 0:53:56.000 Yeah, But okay, first things. First, researchers were like, well, 0:53:56.040 --> 0:53:59.120 we need to get like a handle on the extent 0:53:59.760 --> 0:54:04.799 of this of the contamination that exists. And also we 0:54:05.080 --> 0:54:06.680 you know, and once we get that done, we want 0:54:06.719 --> 0:54:10.240 to find a way to better control contamination in the future. 0:54:11.160 --> 0:54:14.399 And so that you know, both of those things could 0:54:14.400 --> 0:54:17.880 be achieved by developing a test specifically for the presence 0:54:17.880 --> 0:54:21.799 of HeLa cells. To keep that in mind, we need 0:54:21.800 --> 0:54:23.920 to test specifically for HeLa cells. 0:54:24.200 --> 0:54:27.040 Okay, yeah, not going to be good and no. 0:54:28.120 --> 0:54:31.479 By the nineteen seventies, the misleading names of Helen Lane 0:54:31.600 --> 0:54:34.359 or Helen Larsen began to fall out of use as 0:54:34.440 --> 0:54:38.000 journalists and scientists began to set the record straight, with 0:54:38.080 --> 0:54:40.680 one person in a letter to Nature suggesting that it 0:54:40.760 --> 0:54:44.359 might be time to authenticate her name quote and let 0:54:44.440 --> 0:54:49.000 he Lah enjoy the fame she so richly deserves. So 0:54:49.120 --> 0:54:51.960 even though Henriette's real name and connection to the cells 0:54:52.040 --> 0:54:55.120 began to be widely known among the researchers who cultured 0:54:55.160 --> 0:54:58.480 her cells, the family still had no idea of their 0:54:58.520 --> 0:55:05.360 existence until nineteen seventy three when Bobbett, Lawrence's wife, met 0:55:05.360 --> 0:55:08.239 the brother in law of a friend of hers. And 0:55:08.560 --> 0:55:11.360 this brother in law of her friend worked at the 0:55:11.440 --> 0:55:15.080 NIH and when Babette mentioned that her last name was Lax, 0:55:15.440 --> 0:55:18.560 he was like, Oh, that's strange. I work with cells 0:55:18.600 --> 0:55:22.839 from someone named Henrietta Lax. And Bobbett was like, well, 0:55:22.840 --> 0:55:25.399 that was my mother in law's name, but she died 0:55:25.440 --> 0:55:28.640 twenty five years ago and he was like, Oh my gosh, 0:55:28.760 --> 0:55:30.480 that's whose cells I work with? 0:55:31.120 --> 0:55:31.400 What? 0:55:31.960 --> 0:55:35.480 And obviously this led to a lot of confusion for Bobbett, 0:55:35.600 --> 0:55:38.200 the news that this guy worked with her deceased mother 0:55:38.200 --> 0:55:41.120 in law cells and the fact that he ordered them 0:55:41.200 --> 0:55:46.840 quote just like everyone else, like right, how, which implied 0:55:46.840 --> 0:55:49.120 that there were people all over the country and even 0:55:49.120 --> 0:55:53.680 all over the world who had access to her deceased 0:55:53.719 --> 0:55:55.000 mother in law cells. 0:55:55.320 --> 0:56:00.799 That's I can't even imagine how bizarre, right? 0:56:01.600 --> 0:56:05.040 It felt like a violation or an invasion maybe, like 0:56:05.280 --> 0:56:08.640 just I mean, this was yeah, like in many ways, 0:56:08.640 --> 0:56:11.080 this seemed like like some sort of a nightmare, Like 0:56:11.160 --> 0:56:15.160 first they took Henrietta cells without asking, and it seemed likely, 0:56:15.239 --> 0:56:17.600 or at least possible, that next they would try to 0:56:17.640 --> 0:56:22.520 conduct non consensual research on her relatives, which was not 0:56:22.560 --> 0:56:28.040 an unfounded fear, because while discussing this problem of HeLa contamination, 0:56:28.840 --> 0:56:31.239 one of the scientists suggested that a lot of the 0:56:31.280 --> 0:56:34.319 headache could be resolved if they had genetic markers to 0:56:34.400 --> 0:56:37.640 test for the presence of HeLa cells, and one way 0:56:37.680 --> 0:56:40.359 to do that would be to test Henrietta's children as 0:56:40.360 --> 0:56:44.520 well as day lax. No problem, one of the doctors said, 0:56:44.640 --> 0:56:46.920 there's still patients at Johns Hopkins, so we can call 0:56:46.960 --> 0:56:52.799 them right up. And that's what they did. Yeah, according 0:56:52.840 --> 0:56:55.760 to the postdoc put in charge of collecting the blood 0:56:56.160 --> 0:56:59.680 from the Lax family, she called up the family and 0:57:00.000 --> 0:57:02.239 eplained that they wanted to draw some blood from the 0:57:02.280 --> 0:57:05.440 family members so that they can develop these genetic markers. 0:57:06.200 --> 0:57:09.200 But according today, what they said was that they wanted 0:57:09.239 --> 0:57:12.319 to test for the same cancer that Henrietta had and 0:57:12.360 --> 0:57:16.720 her children. Oh dem And so they agreed and blood 0:57:16.800 --> 0:57:21.400 was drawn. Did anyone attempt to obtain informed consent? 0:57:22.360 --> 0:57:22.440 No? 0:57:22.960 --> 0:57:26.320 Did anyone fill out an IRB? No? 0:57:26.320 --> 0:57:26.600 No. 0:57:27.400 --> 0:57:31.920 And while those requirements were not yet finalized in the law, 0:57:32.800 --> 0:57:37.040 they were only months or days away from being finalized. 0:57:37.200 --> 0:57:37.960 Oh my god. 0:57:38.680 --> 0:57:43.600 And when Deborah asked Victor mccusick, who spearheaded this effort, 0:57:43.920 --> 0:57:47.640 about her mother and about her cells, he ticked off 0:57:47.680 --> 0:57:50.440 some things that they had helped to accomplish, like the 0:57:50.480 --> 0:57:54.440 polio vaccine, this genetic research, atomic bomb testing, et cetera. 0:57:55.040 --> 0:57:56.960 And then he handed her a book that he had 0:57:57.080 --> 0:58:01.680 edited called Medical Genetics. In that book, she found jargon 0:58:01.720 --> 0:58:05.640 filled sentences and a photo of her mother that no 0:58:05.640 --> 0:58:09.240 one had ever remembered providing and certainly had not given 0:58:09.280 --> 0:58:14.360 permission to print what yeah, And this was as far 0:58:14.400 --> 0:58:17.240 as he went to explain how her cells were still 0:58:17.280 --> 0:58:20.840 alive even though Henrietta had died, and why they had 0:58:20.880 --> 0:58:23.960 taken her cells, and how they had accomplished those things. 0:58:24.880 --> 0:58:28.920 And they certainly didn't tell Deborah any cancer results because 0:58:28.960 --> 0:58:32.240 they weren't testing for cancer, of course, of course not. 0:58:32.720 --> 0:58:35.800 They left the Lax family with way more questions than 0:58:35.840 --> 0:58:39.720 they attempted to answer, and over the next few decades 0:58:39.760 --> 0:58:42.960 the answers would be slow to come. A reporter for 0:58:43.080 --> 0:58:45.880 Rolling Stone named Michael Rogers, who was one of the first, 0:58:46.040 --> 0:58:48.840 if not the first reporters to contact the Lax family 0:58:48.920 --> 0:58:52.720 about Henrietta, published an article that led to many other 0:58:52.760 --> 0:58:56.520 reporters and people knocking on their door, some well intentioned, 0:58:56.840 --> 0:59:01.800 others very much not, but overall well over time, this 0:59:01.960 --> 0:59:06.240 narrative was shifting from what have these cells been used 0:59:06.240 --> 0:59:11.320 to accomplish? To what does informed consent mean? What rights 0:59:11.320 --> 0:59:14.680 does a person have over their body? How can patient 0:59:14.720 --> 0:59:19.120 privacy be insured, especially in this age of genetic research? 0:59:19.920 --> 0:59:24.440 Can genes be patented? And finally, after all this time, 0:59:24.720 --> 0:59:27.920 who was the person from whom these cells were taken, 0:59:29.440 --> 0:59:33.120 and many people have worked to raise awareness about Henriette A. 0:59:33.160 --> 0:59:37.240 Lax and her story, especially her family and also Rebecca Sclute, 0:59:37.240 --> 0:59:39.760 who wrote the book The Immortal Life of Henriette A. Lax. 0:59:40.840 --> 0:59:44.360 And Henrietta's story is still invoked in discussions of how 0:59:44.680 --> 0:59:49.640 race intersects with informed consent and tissue research and patient privacy. 0:59:50.600 --> 0:59:54.520 Some institutions and companies that have profited off Henrietta cells 0:59:54.680 --> 0:59:59.120 are finally donating money as a small step towards acknowledging 0:59:59.280 --> 1:00:06.360 her contribution, and Henrietta's legacy extends far beyond the scientific 1:00:06.400 --> 1:00:10.080 and medical advancements that her cells helped to achieve. There 1:00:10.120 --> 1:00:14.040 is now the Henrietta Lax Foundation, which provides quote financial 1:00:14.120 --> 1:00:19.080 assistance to individuals and families, particularly within minority communities, who 1:00:19.080 --> 1:00:22.600 were involved in historic research cases without their knowledge, consent, 1:00:22.760 --> 1:00:26.080 or benefit. This includes the cases of Henrietta Lax and 1:00:26.160 --> 1:00:30.640 HeLa cells, the Tuskegee syphilis studies, and the human radiation experiments, 1:00:30.680 --> 1:00:37.720 among others. In addition, several institutions have awarded Henrietta honorary doctorates. 1:00:37.920 --> 1:00:40.520 There are plans for a JOHNS. Hopkins research building to 1:00:40.560 --> 1:00:43.520 be named after her. She's now in the National Women's 1:00:43.520 --> 1:00:46.160 Hall of Fame. Her name has been tied to laws 1:00:46.240 --> 1:00:50.280 protecting participants in clinical research trials. There are plays and 1:00:50.400 --> 1:00:53.960 songs about her. I mean, the list could go on forever, 1:00:54.560 --> 1:01:00.640 just like hersels So Aaron, even though I feel like 1:01:00.800 --> 1:01:04.439 I went on forever, there's so much I didn't cover, 1:01:04.720 --> 1:01:07.520 and I'm very excited to hear what you're going to 1:01:07.600 --> 1:01:11.480 tell me about what HeLa cells and what informed consent 1:01:11.720 --> 1:01:14.400 and tissue culture research is up to today. 1:01:15.760 --> 1:01:17.960 Oh, I can't wait to tell you. We'll take a 1:01:18.040 --> 1:01:46.200 quick break first. There have been over one hundred and 1:01:46.360 --> 1:01:52.040 ten thousand research articles published using HeLa cells. 1:01:52.440 --> 1:01:54.760 That's estimated incredible. 1:01:55.600 --> 1:01:59.880 Three Nobel Prizes have been awarded for work with HeLa cells, 1:02:00.080 --> 1:02:04.200 most recently in twenty fourteen for the development of advanced 1:02:04.280 --> 1:02:09.880 microscopy techniques that allow you to view cellular growth like 1:02:10.200 --> 1:02:16.240 live while telling and like we kind of mentioned many 1:02:16.320 --> 1:02:21.160 times already, HeLa cells have been used for literally everything 1:02:21.200 --> 1:02:24.360 that you can imagine, from the study of virology to 1:02:24.480 --> 1:02:31.920 cancer therapeutics, drug delivery systems, basic cellular functions, cell signaling, everything, everything. 1:02:32.840 --> 1:02:34.959 There's a visual that I'll link to that I think 1:02:35.920 --> 1:02:37.800 kind of gives you a little bit of a clue 1:02:37.800 --> 1:02:40.600 of just like the array of topics and just how 1:02:40.640 --> 1:02:44.080 many there are. But literally everything that we do in 1:02:44.120 --> 1:02:47.000 biology has been done on HeLa cells. 1:02:47.360 --> 1:02:48.200 It's incredible. 1:02:48.480 --> 1:02:53.800 It's incredible. We have come amazingly far in the last 1:02:53.960 --> 1:02:57.760 seventy years in terms of our understanding not only of 1:02:58.520 --> 1:03:03.600 cellular development and molecular biology, but also in our ability 1:03:03.640 --> 1:03:08.320 to use this knowledge for therapeutics, for vaccines, things that 1:03:08.360 --> 1:03:11.920 we talked about in so many previous episodes this season 1:03:12.000 --> 1:03:15.840 and in previous seasons, like in our Huntington's Disease episode 1:03:15.920 --> 1:03:19.200 when we talked about developments in gene therapy and the 1:03:19.240 --> 1:03:22.600 potential for something like Crisper to change the game when 1:03:22.640 --> 1:03:26.200 it comes to genetic diseases. This is only possible because 1:03:26.240 --> 1:03:31.320 of in vitro cell lines. We have made immense strides 1:03:31.720 --> 1:03:38.720 in developing specific targeted cancer treatments like monoclonal antibodies. We've 1:03:38.760 --> 1:03:42.680 also developed treatments for things like even covid and other 1:03:42.800 --> 1:03:43.960 infectious diseases. 1:03:44.360 --> 1:03:45.040 That's amazing. 1:03:45.760 --> 1:03:49.880 We are getting better and better at developing cell lines, 1:03:49.920 --> 1:03:53.600 both from human cells but also animal cell lines to 1:03:53.720 --> 1:03:59.360 produce very specific proteins and antibodies that are closer and 1:03:59.400 --> 1:04:03.600 closer to you, exactly like a very targeted type of 1:04:03.640 --> 1:04:09.080 structure that we want to produce. It's really difficult to 1:04:09.160 --> 1:04:11.800 over I don't think it's possible to overstate the impact 1:04:11.880 --> 1:04:14.200 that these cells have had. No. 1:04:14.400 --> 1:04:17.440 I think it's it's probably like one of the biggest 1:04:17.480 --> 1:04:21.040 things in biomedical research. 1:04:20.720 --> 1:04:26.600 History, right right, so many things. So another future foray 1:04:26.840 --> 1:04:29.919 that we've touched on in the past in our organ 1:04:29.960 --> 1:04:37.520 transplantation episode is the development of induced pluripotent stem cells. Okay, 1:04:38.080 --> 1:04:43.000 so let's talk about this a little bit. Pluripotent stem 1:04:43.080 --> 1:04:46.880 cells are like embryonic stem cells, they can become any 1:04:46.920 --> 1:04:51.960 type of cell. But induced pluripotent stem cells means that 1:04:52.000 --> 1:04:55.400 you take cells from like a grown human, like a 1:04:55.440 --> 1:04:59.600 full adult human or a kid, but a fully differentiated cell, 1:05:00.760 --> 1:05:03.840 and using things that are too complicated for me to 1:05:03.920 --> 1:05:08.960 fully understand and talk about, but including tilomerace, you can 1:05:09.200 --> 1:05:13.800 cause these cells to revert back to being stem cells. 1:05:15.120 --> 1:05:19.600 We have the technology to do this today, and this 1:05:19.680 --> 1:05:23.800 means that not only can you develop an immortal cell 1:05:23.880 --> 1:05:29.080 line from any person cells, but you can develop stem 1:05:29.160 --> 1:05:32.760 cells from any individual cells, which means that those cells 1:05:32.760 --> 1:05:36.680 could then be induced to differentiate into any other cell type. 1:05:37.440 --> 1:05:41.400 That type of technology, combined with technology to grow cells 1:05:41.480 --> 1:05:46.320 in three dimensional structures, it's the exact type of technology 1:05:46.360 --> 1:05:49.520 that makes it even imaginable to someday be able to 1:05:49.520 --> 1:05:53.560 grow entire human organs, which could change the game when 1:05:53.600 --> 1:05:57.880 it comes to treatment of chronic and currently uncurable diseases. 1:05:58.920 --> 1:06:01.640 And even though we don't have that technology right now, 1:06:01.840 --> 1:06:04.480 the fact that it's even something that we can dream 1:06:04.520 --> 1:06:08.840 about is only possible because of HeLa cells, because of 1:06:08.880 --> 1:06:14.760 Henrietta Lacks. Yeah, yeah, it's it's hard to even like 1:06:14.840 --> 1:06:19.560 put into words how influential this has been, Like it's yeah, yeah, 1:06:19.920 --> 1:06:24.360 but even though that's hard to put into words, just 1:06:24.440 --> 1:06:28.520 how influential in terms of scientific achievements HeLa cells have been. 1:06:29.440 --> 1:06:31.760 Like you mentioned a lot Aarin, we have to recognize 1:06:31.800 --> 1:06:37.080 what a massive kind of ethical issue has arisen because 1:06:37.080 --> 1:06:42.080 of this. Not only was it using cells without her permission, 1:06:43.440 --> 1:06:47.000 it was also identifying these cells as belonging to her, 1:06:47.320 --> 1:06:51.680 thereby releasing information about her and her family members without 1:06:51.800 --> 1:06:53.200 their knowledge or permission. 1:06:53.600 --> 1:06:53.840 Right. 1:06:54.720 --> 1:06:57.680 And the thing is, like you kind of alluded to Aarin, 1:06:57.760 --> 1:07:00.880 we really haven't completely fixed the system to ensure that 1:07:00.960 --> 1:07:02.840 this could never happen again. 1:07:02.960 --> 1:07:06.720 Not at all. It's very like alarming. 1:07:07.240 --> 1:07:12.320 Yes, So currently the common Rule, that's what it's called. 1:07:12.440 --> 1:07:15.280 It's the code from the Department of Health and Human 1:07:15.320 --> 1:07:19.840 Services that details the protection of human subjects, basically laying 1:07:19.840 --> 1:07:24.640 out the requirements for RB, institutional review board review, and 1:07:24.800 --> 1:07:28.320 everything that pertains to the ethics of human subjects. Research 1:07:28.440 --> 1:07:32.840 in the United States at this point in time still 1:07:32.920 --> 1:07:38.200 allows for the use of biospecimens without informed consent so 1:07:38.400 --> 1:07:43.120 long as they are deidentified. So no longer can you 1:07:43.280 --> 1:07:47.640 take a cell and call it HeLa, thereby knowing that 1:07:47.720 --> 1:07:51.480 it came from Henrietta Lax. But you could take a 1:07:51.520 --> 1:07:57.080 tissue sample from someone, slap on a number that isn't 1:07:57.120 --> 1:08:00.560 like their medical record number, but is just some their number, 1:08:01.520 --> 1:08:05.160 and thereby make it deidentified so it has no association 1:08:05.320 --> 1:08:13.400 with them without ever telling them. The problem is, yeah, 1:08:13.440 --> 1:08:18.680 that that is not keeping up with the times today. 1:08:19.240 --> 1:08:23.720 You could sequence a genome from that cell and have 1:08:24.400 --> 1:08:28.000 all of that genetic information, and especially when you think 1:08:28.040 --> 1:08:31.120 of how many people swab their cheeks and then send 1:08:31.120 --> 1:08:33.320 in their DNA to be sequenced to all of these 1:08:33.320 --> 1:08:37.559 different companies. Then you have that information and can compare 1:08:37.560 --> 1:08:42.720 it across these databases. In light of how much technology 1:08:42.760 --> 1:08:47.920 has progressed, that type of allowance for allowing the use 1:08:47.960 --> 1:08:53.800 of biospecimens without informed consent, it's problematic. There are some 1:08:54.000 --> 1:08:57.720 new regulations that have come into play that say that 1:08:57.760 --> 1:09:00.960 if there is going to be any genomic innunalysis of 1:09:01.120 --> 1:09:04.200 human data, then you do have to obtain informed consent. 1:09:05.080 --> 1:09:07.240 But that's still just one piece of it. So really, 1:09:07.280 --> 1:09:11.200 this is even though this was last reviewed in twenty seventeen, 1:09:11.520 --> 1:09:15.840 which wasn't that long ago. Yeah, it's still out of 1:09:15.920 --> 1:09:17.080 date at this point. 1:09:17.840 --> 1:09:24.559 I mean, like, we know that technology moves faster than ethics, 1:09:24.600 --> 1:09:29.479 ethics and laws, but like this isn't the writing has 1:09:29.520 --> 1:09:32.639 been on the wall right for a very long time. 1:09:33.400 --> 1:09:37.479 It was more than on the wall in twenty seventeen. 1:09:37.400 --> 1:09:44.160 Exactly exactly. Yeah, I think, you know. The good thing 1:09:44.280 --> 1:09:49.960 is so twenty twenty was Henrietta LAX's one hundredth. 1:09:50.520 --> 1:09:52.800 One hundredth anniversary of the day she was born. 1:09:52.840 --> 1:09:57.240 Right, And so I think that, you know, because of that, 1:09:57.320 --> 1:10:00.240 there was like a large amount of celebration because of that, 1:10:01.200 --> 1:10:03.320 And I think that more and more we are having 1:10:03.360 --> 1:10:08.200 these conversations, right, But like you said, Aaron, people are 1:10:08.200 --> 1:10:12.519 only just now barely beginning to actually put their money 1:10:12.520 --> 1:10:15.599 where their mouth is, both literally and figuratively, to make 1:10:15.640 --> 1:10:18.120 substantial change in the way that we deal with ethics 1:10:18.200 --> 1:10:22.920 in human research studies. There have been two or three 1:10:23.360 --> 1:10:27.639 institutes in the US and the UK that have made 1:10:27.960 --> 1:10:32.639 either a single large donation or have committed to make 1:10:33.040 --> 1:10:36.400 donations to the Henrietta Lax Foundation every time that they 1:10:36.439 --> 1:10:41.080 develop new cell lines from HeLa cells. The head of 1:10:41.200 --> 1:10:43.920 NIH also got a large grant and is donating a 1:10:43.960 --> 1:10:46.840 portion of it to the foundation. So people are kind 1:10:46.840 --> 1:10:50.800 of just finally starting to recognize that because of the 1:10:50.920 --> 1:10:54.479 impact that these sales have had, like there needs to 1:10:54.520 --> 1:10:59.759 be reparations back essentially for sure. Yeah, but it's still 1:11:01.160 --> 1:11:04.400 not nearly at the point yet that it needs to 1:11:04.439 --> 1:11:08.040 be no, right, but it's at least a start. 1:11:08.320 --> 1:11:12.280 It's a start. It's a start, just a delayed start. 1:11:12.560 --> 1:11:13.720 Yeah. 1:11:13.920 --> 1:11:17.080 So we wanted to make this episode in large part 1:11:18.320 --> 1:11:21.000 just to kind of get this story more press so 1:11:21.040 --> 1:11:23.280 that people can really hear about it, and a lot 1:11:23.280 --> 1:11:25.559 of people have asked for us to cover it. But 1:11:25.600 --> 1:11:27.760 we also wanted to put our money where our mouth 1:11:27.880 --> 1:11:30.599 is So we also made a donation to the Henry 1:11:30.760 --> 1:11:36.160 Lax Foundation. Yeah, so small step, but a step nonetheless 1:11:36.280 --> 1:11:36.839 a step. 1:11:37.160 --> 1:11:37.760 Yeah. 1:11:38.080 --> 1:11:41.560 So with that sources sources. 1:11:43.520 --> 1:11:46.600 My source list was very short for this episode. Primarily 1:11:46.760 --> 1:11:50.120 I use the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lax by Rebecca 1:11:50.160 --> 1:11:52.120 Sclute and a few articles here and there that I 1:11:52.120 --> 1:11:56.160 will post on our website. I'm jealous, Aaron, I have 1:11:56.200 --> 1:11:59.599 a long list of articles because I had to learn 1:11:59.640 --> 1:12:03.880 all about you know, tulamers and things. But I'll post 1:12:04.080 --> 1:12:06.280 the full list of all of the sources that I 1:12:06.360 --> 1:12:08.000 used if you want to learn more about the cell 1:12:08.040 --> 1:12:12.439 cycle and cell lines and also what we use HeLa 1:12:12.479 --> 1:12:16.040 cells for today and kind of the future of cell 1:12:16.120 --> 1:12:18.960 culture and cell lines. On our website This podcast will 1:12:19.000 --> 1:12:21.080 Kill You dot com under the episodes tab, you can 1:12:21.120 --> 1:12:23.920 find the fullest of our sources for this episode and 1:12:24.120 --> 1:12:25.000 every single one. 1:12:24.840 --> 1:12:25.600 Of our episodes. 1:12:26.240 --> 1:12:30.000 Yes, thank you to Bloodmobile for providing the music for 1:12:30.040 --> 1:12:32.160 this episode and all of our episodes. 1:12:32.720 --> 1:12:35.160 Thank you to the Exactly Right Network, of whom we 1:12:35.240 --> 1:12:37.719 are extremely proud to be a part. 1:12:38.120 --> 1:12:42.200 And thank you to you listeners for listening. Yeah for 1:12:42.280 --> 1:12:43.600 recommending this episode. 1:12:44.040 --> 1:12:46.639 Yeah, we hope that it lived up to your hopes 1:12:46.680 --> 1:12:48.040 and dreams and expectations. 1:12:48.360 --> 1:12:54.040 Yeah, well, until next time, wash your hands. 1:12:54.080 --> 1:12:55.440 You filthy animals. 1:13:00.040 --> 1:13:19.120 Obe o b u b o o b