Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
Speaker 1: from House Stuff Works dot com. Sometimes science goes too far,
Speaker 1: Dog Matters twisted but true. Wednesday's at ten on Science. Hey,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Happy New
Speaker 1: Year too. Huh. Yeah, that's Chuck Bryant, Charles W. Bryant,
Speaker 1: baby here himself. Yeah, he's always chubby me No, baby
Speaker 1: New Year Chuck. Yeah, with the ears. Yeah, poor kids.
Speaker 1: He always has like kind of curly hair, which I'm
Speaker 1: I'm not a com portion too. Yeah. You know, growing
Speaker 1: up watching the little Claymation Happy New Year baby thing,
Speaker 1: the baby New Year. Remember the Huge years. Oh, that's
Speaker 1: so I was just talking about. That was like the
Speaker 1: little stock claymation like Rudolph. Yeah, but there was one
Speaker 1: for for New Year's and it was the baby that
Speaker 1: had the huge ears. When he took his hat off,
Speaker 1: his ears would pop out and everyone would chastise him.
Speaker 1: What did it sound like when he took his ears
Speaker 1: out like that? It sounded like actually, but always felt
Speaker 1: bad because I thought it was a cute little claymation baby. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was that the crux of it that, like he
Speaker 1: just had big ears and everybody laughed at him. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I can't remember how it ented he finally found a
Speaker 1: home or something. I don't know. You're good, because there's
Speaker 1: nothing sadder than a homeless baby on New Year's yea
Speaker 1: with big ears, Chuck, Josh, have you ever heard of Herophilus?
Speaker 1: I have? You want to talk a bit about herofilus
Speaker 1: journey back to fourth century BC, or as you like
Speaker 1: to say, b c E the new BC. Um he
Speaker 1: was that he's known as the father of anatomy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and one of the ways that he became known as
Speaker 1: the father of anatomy was by um dissecting vivisecting live
Speaker 1: human beings. Yes, live, well, I was about to say
Speaker 1: live cald ever, But a cad ever is dead, live
Speaker 1: human human patients dissecting for for science, right, and I
Speaker 1: believe they were they were criminals right many times. Yes,
Speaker 1: So we're talking about human experimentation. We're basing this on
Speaker 1: an article written by the fine esteemed writer Robert Lamb
Speaker 1: and he starts out paid zero with um. This account
Speaker 1: of horofilis uh cutting through the eyeball of a guy
Speaker 1: who was strapped to a table and I guess something
Speaker 1: stuffed in his mouth to muffle the screams. But his
Speaker 1: eyeball is being dissected in front of a group of
Speaker 1: surgeons by Horaflis. Please once more, the master pots flesh
Speaker 1: enters the bloody maze of otteries and muscle. You know,
Speaker 1: we should have gotten r l in here to read
Speaker 1: it himself. Good stuff. So yeah, um, apparently this guy
Speaker 1: that um that that Robert's writing about, this victim was
Speaker 1: one of more than six hundred that were vivisected at
Speaker 1: the hands of Herophilis over the course of his lifetime, right, yes,
Speaker 1: for alive prisoners. Yeah, so that's kind of sickening. It
Speaker 1: is horrific, but it was apparently par for the course, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: the time. Sure, So all these people, why would you
Speaker 1: why would you dissect a live person or vivisect a
Speaker 1: live person. I think it's dissect if it is dead,
Speaker 1: and vivisect if they're alive, is it? I believe? So? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean there's there's there's reasons for it. You wouldn't
Speaker 1: want to justify it. But they were doing that because
Speaker 1: sometimes you just need a human to perform an experiment
Speaker 1: on and sometimes a kid ever didn't do the job.
Speaker 1: And before they were scruples, they would, you know, do
Speaker 1: it on a live person instead of like an animal
Speaker 1: test right. Apparently back in horafulis is age. Also, they
Speaker 1: thought that air was carried in the circulatory system rather
Speaker 1: than blood, which is weird because if you vivisector person,
Speaker 1: blood comes out, although I imagine air does too since
Speaker 1: you can't see it. They're like, oh, let's air. This
Speaker 1: is just something. And this guy's the father of anatomy.
Speaker 1: He is. Come on, here's the big ironic twist. All
Speaker 1: of his writings that he all the notes he took,
Speaker 1: all the the scholarly works he created based on the
Speaker 1: deaths or the intolerable pain experienced by these six people
Speaker 1: were all lost when the Library of Alexandria burned in
Speaker 1: uh to. This is rapidly devolving into a sound effect show. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's so um should we tell people what that is?
Speaker 1: Jerry got us a little gift for Christmas, a little
Speaker 1: uh sound machine, And the funny thing is that she
Speaker 1: asked us to keep it on the d L and
Speaker 1: we just told a hundred thousand people. Yeah. Yeah. The
Speaker 1: other funny thing, and so she actually said we could
Speaker 1: use it. I thought she was gonna say, well, here,
Speaker 1: but you can never use this, right, Yeah, and she
Speaker 1: encouraged us to use it as well. So chuck. The
Speaker 1: idea of somebody writhing under the knife while a guy
Speaker 1: like Corophilis or anybody else with a sharp sharp object
Speaker 1: cuts his eyeball open to examine the nerves inside. Uh,
Speaker 1: is a pretty horrific idea, indeed, Um. And the problem
Speaker 1: is is this kind of thing didn't end in a
Speaker 1: d two seventy two. Now it continued on. Apparently history
Speaker 1: is littered with human experimentation. Yes, so much so that
Speaker 1: there were body snatching problems in the nineteenth century because
Speaker 1: medical schools needed bodies, right they You couldn't in the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century. By the nineteenth century, you couldn't vivisect anybody
Speaker 1: you weren't supposed to. And also because of the puritanical ideals, Um,
Speaker 1: you couldn't do any kind of um dissection on cadavers.
Speaker 1: Right now, of course you can, right, which is a
Speaker 1: good move, because, like you said, there was a lot
Speaker 1: of grave robbing going on to supply the medical schools
Speaker 1: who still needed this knowledge. Um. And wanted, and we're
Speaker 1: willing to pay grave robbers for it. Time. Do you
Speaker 1: remember back in ninety nine when they found some bones,
Speaker 1: actually hundred bones in the basement of Medical College of Georgia. Really, yeah,
Speaker 1: I did not know that. Yeah, they were they dated
Speaker 1: back to the nineteenth century, and they were linked to
Speaker 1: um rob graves. Yeah. That's crazy, isn't it? It is
Speaker 1: so well, you know, that's if you're dealing with kidavers
Speaker 1: if you're there. Also, if you wanted to experiment on
Speaker 1: a live um living thing, then you would now have
Speaker 1: to go the route of like chimps and rabbits and
Speaker 1: mice rats, right, which actually, what we've done, from what
Speaker 1: I understand, is with human experimentation, we've put lower making
Speaker 1: air quotes here, lower species in between us and initial discovery. Right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The problem was back in the day though, they did
Speaker 1: the same thing, but they considered lower species other humans
Speaker 1: specifically convicts, yeah, or poor are in destitute, diseased, Yeah exactly,
Speaker 1: but convicts for sure, convicts have pretty much always gotten
Speaker 1: it pretty bad, um as far as human experimentation goes.
Speaker 1: But yeah, um, so these days we we do put
Speaker 1: h rabbits and rats and and um, chimps and macaques
Speaker 1: and in between us and um, you know, not knowing
Speaker 1: what a drug will do or something like that. But really,
Speaker 1: ultimately it still ends up to humans. And one of
Speaker 1: the reasons why is because you know, you can't you
Speaker 1: they we don't even know whether or not animals experience happiness,
Speaker 1: you know, do they How can we figure out if
Speaker 1: they're hallucinating? Yeah? Sure, they can't help self report. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you gotta ask questions every now and then. Right, and
Speaker 1: then also, I mean, if you're doing if you're making
Speaker 1: a drug for humans, you eventually have to find out
Speaker 1: exactly what it does to humans. It's not gonna have
Speaker 1: the same effect on a rat, although it will probably
Speaker 1: be close. And what we'll get into that in a minute.
Speaker 1: All right, should we talk about some of the horrific
Speaker 1: things that have happened throughout our history? Judge, Well, don't
Speaker 1: forget the whole him. There's another there's another route you
Speaker 1: could take it self experimentation, Yes, living your living self,
Speaker 1: experimenting on yourself, which I mean there have been some
Speaker 1: famous examples of this. Yes. Famously, Pierre and Mary Curie
Speaker 1: earned a Nobel Prize in Physics from radiation research, and
Speaker 1: they did this pie taping radium salts to their skin
Speaker 1: and seeing what happened. So that's one way to do it.
Speaker 1: Another guy who famously tried his his research out on
Speaker 1: himself as Albert Hoffman, the guy who created LSD, right,
Speaker 1: and apparently he had a diary where he writes about
Speaker 1: his bike ride home after injecting himself with LSD and
Speaker 1: he had no bike. No, he had a bike, but
Speaker 1: he was like, Wow, nothing is real And I really
Speaker 1: feel like listening to pink Floyd right now. Yeah, yet
Speaker 1: to be discovered, pink Floyd yet to be born. I
Speaker 1: think even um so Chuck self experimentation has its own flaws, right,
Speaker 1: if you're vivisecting an eyeball and you do it to yourself,
Speaker 1: you can't do that more than once. You probably wouldn't
Speaker 1: even do it that one time, yea. So really there
Speaker 1: is a lot to be gained from vivisecting human beings. Well,
Speaker 1: we don't do it. And one of the reasons why
Speaker 1: is because it's horrific. So yes, let's talk about some
Speaker 1: of the horrific human experiments that litter history. Jay Mary
Speaker 1: and Simms. Is that name? Ringabelle No? That is uh
Speaker 1: considered to be the father of gynecology. Oh yeah, Jay
Speaker 1: Mary and Sims, Sims and uh. He even became the
Speaker 1: president of the A M A and eighteen seventy six.
Speaker 1: But he developed um experimental surgeries by testing them on
Speaker 1: African slaves many times without anesthesia. Yeah, dark side for sure, man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would definitely call that a dark side. Yeah. He
Speaker 1: gets lauded probably in many circles still today he does. Um. Apparently,
Speaker 1: Uh that was we think of the Nazis especially, and
Speaker 1: we'll talk about them in a minute. But the US
Speaker 1: has a really shady history of human experimentation. Um. A
Speaker 1: guy named Dr Leo Stanley Uh injected prisoners at San
Speaker 1: Quentin with animal testinges too uh slow or reverse aging,
Speaker 1: which did not work out. Um, Cholerado experiments on the
Speaker 1: Philippines conducted by US nineteen fifteen, Palagra experiments in Mississippi, right. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then apparently we were talking about how prisoners have
Speaker 1: always gotten a bad rap up. Until the nineteen seventies
Speaker 1: in the United States, pretty much all pharmaceuticals were tested
Speaker 1: on convicts. You did not want to break a law. Now,
Speaker 1: I wonder you know how people hearken back to like
Speaker 1: the the Golden Age when there was less crime and
Speaker 1: less violence and all that. I wonder how much of
Speaker 1: it had to do with the fact that if you
Speaker 1: went to prison, like you would be experimented on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I wonder if you know that, though it probably wasn't
Speaker 1: why they reported. Until you get to prison. Then you're like,
Speaker 1: oh oops, yeah that's yeah. Had I known, right, but
Speaker 1: I imagine recitativism rates what what's a bone head word?
Speaker 1: We're pretty low. Yeah, you're probably right, so chuck. You know. Also,
Speaker 1: the United States was huge into compulsory sterilization, right, I
Speaker 1: did not know that the eugenics movement. Okay, so between
Speaker 1: I guess the early nineteen hundreds, the first decade of
Speaker 1: the twentieth century up until the seventies, I think maybe
Speaker 1: the ninety one, uh sixty four thousand people in the
Speaker 1: United States were sterilized against their will, like epileptics, the
Speaker 1: mentally handicapped, blind, deaf, mutes, um schizophrenics, and Native Americans
Speaker 1: against their will, sometimes unknowingly unbelievable. Yeah, which you could.
Speaker 1: That's not necessarily an experiment because you know exactly what's
Speaker 1: gonna happen. The prison is going to be sterilized. But um,
Speaker 1: if you look at it as eugenics, it's it is
Speaker 1: kind of larger experiment to basically created great race and
Speaker 1: then the eugenics the popularity. I mean it was well
Speaker 1: known this was going on. This was in a secret
Speaker 1: government program like mk ultra, right, and there was public
Speaker 1: support for it until World War Two, which remember actually
Speaker 1: can you remember to the future, Yes, when we talk
Speaker 1: about mercenaries, right, World War Two changed everything we did. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Nazis really lead the way when it comes to
Speaker 1: human experimentation. Um, as everyone knows against the Jews, Gypsies,
Speaker 1: anyone they felt like targeting. They would do things like
Speaker 1: freezing them to research hypothermia and then actually came it
Speaker 1: became huge later their hypothermia research is like really used
Speaker 1: still yeah, well we'll get into the ethics. Uh. They
Speaker 1: put them in the compression chambers to test the effects
Speaker 1: of high altitude flight, which it doesn't get much worse
Speaker 1: than that, and a sterilization experiments as well, like the
Speaker 1: US was doing. They would use a phosphorus incendiary phosphorus
Speaker 1: devices to figure out how to treat phosphorus burns. Japan
Speaker 1: was another country. Their Unit seven thirty one very famous
Speaker 1: unit reportedly killed more than ten thousand Chinese, Korean, and
Speaker 1: Russian POWs to develop biological weapons and tests of stuff
Speaker 1: out on them basically, right. Um. So the Nazis in
Speaker 1: particular face the music at Nuremberg, right um. And there
Speaker 1: was this part to the Nuremberg trials called the Doctor's trials. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I think a bunch of the guys, like seventeen
Speaker 1: were convicted, and most of them I think were hanged. Yeah, um.
Speaker 1: And a lot of these guys cases were Dude, we
Speaker 1: didn't break any laws. There's no lawful outline of what
Speaker 1: to do when you're experimenting on a human, and a
Speaker 1: lot of this stuff followed the same kind of protocol
Speaker 1: that we had before the war, right right, which is
Speaker 1: just horrendous, but in a lot of cases it was
Speaker 1: actually true. Right. So one of the results of the
Speaker 1: Nuremberg Trial was the Nuremberg Code, where the international community said,
Speaker 1: all right, we need to outline some some guidelines for
Speaker 1: human experimentation. And if I think there's like ten points
Speaker 1: to it, ten large overviews UH to human experimentation guidelines,
Speaker 1: and it focuses on UM reducing UH, fear and pain
Speaker 1: discomfort in the experiment. Subjects that can't be coerced, that
Speaker 1: has to be willing, that have to be informed. What's
Speaker 1: this covered by? What's that under? You know, like what
Speaker 1: document or organization that's under I don't know, probably the
Speaker 1: u WIN. I would think the u N would have
Speaker 1: something to do with that. But yes, but it's very
Speaker 1: famous called the Nuremberg Code, right, and it solves like
Speaker 1: the moral quandary uh jevercy Um extreme measures, Gene Hackman,
Speaker 1: Hugh Grant, all right, so you know, like in the end,
Speaker 1: I think they're in a sewer somehow. Gene Hackman's like,
Speaker 1: if you had to kill one to save a million,
Speaker 1: wouldn't you have to do it? And so the Nuremberg
Speaker 1: Code solves that. And the answer, by the way, is no,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't kill one. Yeah, that's the old, the age
Speaker 1: old question, though, right, kill one to save many, which
Speaker 1: is a very utilitarian view of of looking at things like, yes,
Speaker 1: you kill one person to save a million, of course
Speaker 1: you do, but we as an international collective have decided
Speaker 1: that you don't do that. One person's life is worth
Speaker 1: as much as a million people's potential lives. So that
Speaker 1: brings us to The real quandary that with human experimentation
Speaker 1: is what do you do with this information that has
Speaker 1: gained from these awful, awful experiments. Um. A lot of
Speaker 1: detractors will say that to use this information supports human experimentation, right,
Speaker 1: But then another way of looking at it is to
Speaker 1: propose like kind of do a thought experiment of all right,
Speaker 1: let's say that you are you walk in on one
Speaker 1: of these experiments. You say, your death is inevitable and
Speaker 1: it's going to be a painful, horrible death. But you
Speaker 1: can choose whether or not this data that was that
Speaker 1: your results from your death is suppressed or used. Which
Speaker 1: one do you want? And then you know that most
Speaker 1: people would say, well, if I'm going to die anyway,
Speaker 1: I would want this data to be used. That's the
Speaker 1: argument the other side uses, Yeah, the US cut a
Speaker 1: little deal though with you one. I know we were
Speaker 1: it's such we have such a shady history, like we
Speaker 1: used Nazi scientists to get us to the moon. Well,
Speaker 1: this was particularly to keep it from falling into the
Speaker 1: wrong hands. So we thought, hey, rather than give that
Speaker 1: to the Russians Une, let's cut a deal where the
Speaker 1: officers responsible for this good immunity from prosecution and war crimes,
Speaker 1: and we get the data, and we'll even give you
Speaker 1: a little stipend. Yeah, on the side, we'll give you
Speaker 1: some money probably way to come up with those biological weapons.
Speaker 1: Nicely done. Um, Like we said, the Nazi hypothermia experiments,
Speaker 1: which were pretty brutal apparently, um the they would put
Speaker 1: you in an icy vat of water with a thermometer
Speaker 1: in erectum and they found that most people died, went
Speaker 1: unconscious and died around when their body temperature seventy degrees fahrenheit. Right, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's such a useful information. But no, the useful
Speaker 1: information came in they were looking for ways to revive
Speaker 1: people suffering from hypothermia because the Germans were losing so
Speaker 1: many people on the Eastern Front in Germany. Um that
Speaker 1: they actually did figure out ways of quickly reviving people
Speaker 1: suffering from hypothermia. So hypotherp post war hypothermia researchers are like, dude,
Speaker 1: these people, as ghastly as these experiments are, they figured
Speaker 1: out how to revive people suffering from hypothermia. We need
Speaker 1: that information. So I think with with that, UM, I
Speaker 1: guess that group leading the charge Nazi data has been
Speaker 1: used in a lot of ways, but then there it
Speaker 1: should be cited, I think was the compromise that they
Speaker 1: came up with. Yeah, and it actually worked the other
Speaker 1: way to Jewish doctors would later study um victims of
Speaker 1: starvation in the ghetto and the word slaw ghetto and
Speaker 1: they use that to aid in the study of UM
Speaker 1: hunger associated disease. So they found a way to use
Speaker 1: it at least. And so we were talking also about
Speaker 1: how the US has a nice long history of horrible
Speaker 1: stuff like the Tuskegee experiments. You want to talk about that. Yes,
Speaker 1: a forty year study of a syphilis began in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty two, and they use African Americans who sought treatment
Speaker 1: for this disease, and they basically straight up lied and
Speaker 1: deceived them thinking they were being treated. Right. They they
Speaker 1: actually didn't use any kind of medical intervention because they
Speaker 1: wanted to watch the progression of syphilis. Yeah, they want
Speaker 1: to see it gets worse, and so they could chart
Speaker 1: everything out and they had no idea. And then I
Speaker 1: guess finally in uh No, the US issues a public
Speaker 1: apology for for this and there's still some people alive
Speaker 1: who were experimented on unbelievable. Yeah, and you know, we've
Speaker 1: we've documented the LSD experiments that unsuspecting Americans were dosed
Speaker 1: and the mk Ultra project. We did a whole show
Speaker 1: on that. Didn't me Yeah, it was like our best one,
Speaker 1: didn't we did you forget? Well it was a long
Speaker 1: time ago, so yeah, well you were kind of out
Speaker 1: of it if you remember. The beginning of that one
Speaker 1: was oh, that's right. Yeah, we did a role playing
Speaker 1: so Chuck. There was kind of a huge sea change
Speaker 1: in the way that human experimentation was looked at and
Speaker 1: carried out when the f d A was established in
Speaker 1: the thirties. All of a sudden, there were review boards
Speaker 1: and panels. Um, the universities kind of stepped in and said,
Speaker 1: all right, we play a big role in this. We're
Speaker 1: gonna start establishing stricter oversight of human experimentation. And that's
Speaker 1: kind of the course that we've followed since then. Right,
Speaker 1: drug trials, drug trials exactly? Do you know any human
Speaker 1: guinea pigs? Now I've never done it, but um, you know,
Speaker 1: phase one drug trials is usually where you'll get the
Speaker 1: most folks, because you need healthy, healthy individuals who are
Speaker 1: willing to risk their health for money and basically what
Speaker 1: they're doing in these phase one trial or you know
Speaker 1: when you see these commercials that rattle off a hundred
Speaker 1: side effects, they're positively frightening. They get these from giving
Speaker 1: these uh these medications to people and seeing what happens. Basically, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb put it really well. He said that if
Speaker 1: your bottle of medication says that it might result in
Speaker 1: bowl bowel control problems or suicidal thoughts, you can bet
Speaker 1: that someone received a paycheck for experiencing them at some
Speaker 1: point exactly. So that's what they know. So that's phase one.
Speaker 1: Phase two deals with dosing and efficiency, and phase three
Speaker 1: enlist um actual patients who need this treatment, not not
Speaker 1: healthy people, and people who volunteer for phase one clinical
Speaker 1: trials are uh handsomely paid depending on the risk involves.
Speaker 1: That's one of the problems. Yeah, And I mean it's
Speaker 1: kind of like a vacation. You're you're fed, and you're
Speaker 1: put up maybe in a hotel or the hospital room
Speaker 1: has um like a video game console, you watch movies
Speaker 1: or whatever, and they just shoot you full of something
Speaker 1: and then come in like every fifteen minutes or hour
Speaker 1: whatever and say, you know, like have you seen that
Speaker 1: leopard can you were talking to earlier again, you know,
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. But that's one of the problems
Speaker 1: is that some of these folks bounced from experiment to
Speaker 1: experiment and you know, kind of make a half asked
Speaker 1: living off of this, right, I guess you can. I mean,
Speaker 1: especially if you're dedicated. He talks about Lamb talks about
Speaker 1: a an article in The New Yorker that is about
Speaker 1: it's called guinea pigging, I believe, and it's about this
Speaker 1: soap culture of clinical drug trial participants who have their
Speaker 1: own like publications that show like who's what upcoming drug
Speaker 1: trials are, are are in the pipeline and how much
Speaker 1: they're gonna pay and that kind of stuff. So there's
Speaker 1: a concern that, like, yeah, these people are kind of
Speaker 1: hooked on this lifestyle. My thing is is like to
Speaker 1: each his own, sure, you know, yeah, I mean, if
Speaker 1: they're if there are no laws being broken and they're
Speaker 1: getting paid and they're willing to do this instead of
Speaker 1: going to get a chop delivering pizzas, then you know, frankly,
Speaker 1: if they can get my pizza to me and stay safe,
Speaker 1: not harm other people, and deliver a delicious pizza. Still
Speaker 1: I don't care if they're in the midst of a
Speaker 1: drug trial. Right. Then, here's another thing I didn't know
Speaker 1: that I thought was interesting in this article is that
Speaker 1: they kind of put the pedal to the metal when
Speaker 1: it comes to these trials because a US drug patent
Speaker 1: only last for twenty years, and so if you're hung
Speaker 1: up for a decade and research and testing, which can happen,
Speaker 1: then that they don't start it over once you get
Speaker 1: it approved. You've got only ten years left to make
Speaker 1: you know, serious money, and they speed these things along.
Speaker 1: They do. Now, if you're running it through university, they
Speaker 1: generally have well, universities have a reputation for being total
Speaker 1: sticklers when it comes to um institutional review boards, right um.
Speaker 1: So as a result, I think that a lot of
Speaker 1: drug companies have found that if you run it instead
Speaker 1: through a private organization that does the clinical trials for you,
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden, you can walk around
Speaker 1: all out of these ethical guidelines or you know, safe
Speaker 1: conditions and yet again outsourcing to private contractors for money.
Speaker 1: It's uh, just it's the way to get around things exactly.
Speaker 1: So that's medical experimentation. There's a this is a really
Speaker 1: cool article. It's slightly outside of the how Stuff Works voice.
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb put his all in all into it. He
Speaker 1: put his Lamb stamp on it. He did at the
Speaker 1: very least. You gotta read paid zero, and I defy
Speaker 1: you to just repaid zero. For those of you out there,
Speaker 1: a page zero is really page one. We just that's
Speaker 1: the insider lingo here and we still Chuck and I
Speaker 1: have worked here for more than two years and we've
Speaker 1: still never figured out why they call it paid zero.
Speaker 1: So if you want to read paid zero of how
Speaker 1: Human Experimentation Works, you can type in human experimentation in
Speaker 1: the handy search bar at how stuff Works dot com.
Speaker 1: And I guess you could say that that leads us
Speaker 1: to listener. May. Yes, Josh, this is about in our
Speaker 1: Co States. I remember Narco States. I'm gonna call it
Speaker 1: a Narco state email. Uh, this is from Christer who
Speaker 1: Actually you had to write Christer back and say are
Speaker 1: you're a boy or a girl because I've never heard
Speaker 1: that name? And Christos a dude. So Christo says I
Speaker 1: currently live in Wires, Mexico. What yeah, exactly, because we
Speaker 1: covered wires pretty thoroughly. Yeah, it is sad to stand
Speaker 1: out as a dangerous narco zone rather than being recognized
Speaker 1: for a decent achievement. Uh, but things here are indeed
Speaker 1: pretty crazy. Murders are super high, and I've tragically lost
Speaker 1: some friends throughout the year. As if this wasn't enough,
Speaker 1: even the government is messing with us, as I had
Speaker 1: an experience last July my parents happened on a clothing shop.
Speaker 1: We were asked by some federal agents to give out
Speaker 1: a big amount of money two d and fifty thousand
Speaker 1: U S. Dollars just because, of course, my family refused
Speaker 1: to do so. A week later, they came with an
Speaker 1: order to close and empty my parents shop and locked
Speaker 1: up my dad. We gave a smaller amount just so
Speaker 1: he was released and we thought it would just in there.
Speaker 1: But to our surprise, a month later, we were surrounded
Speaker 1: by about twenty agents holding an apprehension order to take
Speaker 1: both of my parents, charging them for supposedly commercializing priate
Speaker 1: of clothing, which was a trump up charged I know.
Speaker 1: I was left alone with my three younger brothers for
Speaker 1: more than three months until the agent on top agreed
Speaker 1: to let them out of prison for fifty dollars and
Speaker 1: the case was closed. The sick experience, and thank god
Speaker 1: it was finally over. Throughout those three months of grief,
Speaker 1: you guys were right there with me, and you were
Speaker 1: a nice distraction from my awful situation at a time
Speaker 1: that was clearly troubling, and I want to thank you
Speaker 1: for that. It was probably doesn't mean the same to
Speaker 1: you guys, but it was helpful in some way for me.
Speaker 1: I no longer want to live in this place, and
Speaker 1: I'm just looking forward to moving to the US as
Speaker 1: soon as possible, I know. Uh. So we just wanted
Speaker 1: to share this and say Merry Christmas. So um, we
Speaker 1: had some angry people right in by the way about me,
Speaker 1: saying we should just drop the borders and let anyone in.
Speaker 1: And I just want to say to those folks, think
Speaker 1: about people like Krister here who are just dying to
Speaker 1: get to the United States because of of stuff like this,
Speaker 1: and the US represents, you know, something, something great to them,
Speaker 1: and uh, we shouldn't forget that. So that this I'm
Speaker 1: on my high hearts and now I'm getting off of it.
Speaker 1: Thanks ju. Do we have a horse effect? Now, let's see,
Speaker 1: we've got something close to it. And that would be
Speaker 1: weird if you have an email about escaping certain death,
Speaker 1: being extorted by the Mexican military, or any kind of
Speaker 1: unjust um story, right true. Yeah, you can send it
Speaker 1: in an email to stuff podcast at Wait. Happy New Year, everybody, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Happy New Year. Be safe. Christoper, We're glad you're alive. Yes,
Speaker 1: we're glad. Everybody who made it through two thousand and
Speaker 1: nine made it through two thousand nine. Act how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. For more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. Want more
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