Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from housetop dot com.
Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to stop to blow your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Brown and I'm Christian Sager. Hey, Robert,
Speaker 1: have you ever had like a warped or any kind
Speaker 1: of I don't know, just weird growth. Um. Yeah, I've
Speaker 1: had things of that nature. I had sort of like
Speaker 1: an ingrown hair once that went to the dermatolgist about
Speaker 1: and they're like sliced it out, and yeah, that's like,
Speaker 1: I think, pretty common for most people. In fact, like
Speaker 1: just recently, you know, I'm closing in on forty and
Speaker 1: and just recently I went to the doctor and I
Speaker 1: had like this weird growth and like I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: detail where it was, but it was, you know, the
Speaker 1: lower quadrant kind of uncomfortable and uh, did you have
Speaker 1: eyes or amount? No eyes yet? It wasn't there yet,
Speaker 1: but I was worried about eyes. And I said to
Speaker 1: my doctor, what is this do I need to worry?
Speaker 1: Is a cancer? And he was like, oh, that's a
Speaker 1: skin tag. Those are super common, don't worry about it.
Speaker 1: And then he like whipped out liquid nitrogen and right
Speaker 1: there just froze it off. My body and burned it off,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, I can imagine just having that
Speaker 1: one little thing. I was like super freaked out of course,
Speaker 1: Like the thought is just, oh, it's cancer, right. Uh.
Speaker 1: But today we're gonna talk about a disease in which,
Speaker 1: like we're not just talking about like warts or skin
Speaker 1: tags here, but like people's entire bodies overgrow with these
Speaker 1: bark like lesions to the point that they're referred to
Speaker 1: as tree men. Yeah. They're kind of talking about some
Speaker 1: of the well certainly rare, but also like worst case
Speaker 1: um situations in which you have out of control growth
Speaker 1: going on with your body and yet you were continuing
Speaker 1: to live with it. Yeah, and so it's just it's
Speaker 1: it's actually referred to the medical term, let's take it
Speaker 1: slowly here, epidermo dysplasia verisiformists, and but most people call
Speaker 1: it tree man disease. Yeah, and we may call it
Speaker 1: e V. Yeah this episode, just to keep it simple,
Speaker 1: but also maybe not refer to it, uh with this
Speaker 1: more fantastic connotations. And those of you out there, you
Speaker 1: have maybe seen pictures of guys like this before. It's
Speaker 1: not just men. Actually I shouldn't say guys. There have
Speaker 1: been women who have had the disease as well, but
Speaker 1: it's incredibly rare, like super rare. So we're like, we
Speaker 1: couldn't find any statistics on how rare it actually is.
Speaker 1: There's only like three pretty well documented cases and those
Speaker 1: are in the last like let's say, like twenty or
Speaker 1: thirty years. Uh. And but what's particularly interesting about this
Speaker 1: to me and I want to keep in mind as
Speaker 1: like we're going forward and talking about this disease, which
Speaker 1: is fascinating and the medical science curiosity that I think
Speaker 1: is worthy of the show, but also that like there's
Speaker 1: a what I call kind of elephant man syndrome thing
Speaker 1: going on here with these with patients of tree man disease. Yeah,
Speaker 1: where you get a little media outlets just swarm on
Speaker 1: these people. Um and in particular, they will take a
Speaker 1: lot of pictures of them, uh, follow them around. In
Speaker 1: one case, there was a guy who I think he
Speaker 1: was He was followed by at least two different TV
Speaker 1: stations that were multiple documentaries made about him. One of
Speaker 1: the TV channels UH paid for his medical surgeries because
Speaker 1: there and we'll talk about it. There's treatment available for
Speaker 1: people with tree Man disease or e V. But Um,
Speaker 1: there's also just a weird kind of Yes, this is
Speaker 1: a medical curiosity, but also like a sideshow barker kind
Speaker 1: of gaze to it. Yeah, it is. It is a
Speaker 1: weird area to get into because you know, we were
Speaker 1: as as a population, we're kind of drawn to these
Speaker 1: these examples. We we can't look away. There's a there
Speaker 1: is a definite grotesque quality to these to these conditions,
Speaker 1: and you know that, like I said that there they
Speaker 1: can be nightmareck to behold, and so we're interested in them.
Speaker 1: And then also we you know, everyone loves a story
Speaker 1: of somebody overcoming a situation. Everybody loves a story in
Speaker 1: which medical science is able to triumph over you know,
Speaker 1: disfiguration and disease. And so yeah, we want we want
Speaker 1: to document these stories. We want to see the stories.
Speaker 1: We want to see that before and after that, you know,
Speaker 1: the marvelous transformation. But on the other hand, yeah, there's
Speaker 1: this exploitive aspect of it as well. I've been watching
Speaker 1: that TV show Penny Dreadful lately. You know what that is.
Speaker 1: It's like I watched the first season. Okay, yeah, so
Speaker 1: there's like, you know, no spoilers here, but but it's
Speaker 1: set in the late nineteenth century, and there's freak shows
Speaker 1: are sort of a thing that are you know, are
Speaker 1: talked about and and sort of alluded to in the show,
Speaker 1: especially because some of the you know, some of the
Speaker 1: characters are werewolves and Frankenstein and and vampires and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. So there's there's that kind of alluding Asian
Speaker 1: going on. And they even referenced John Merrick at one point. Uh.
Speaker 1: But in It's so I guess maybe I'm hyper sensitive
Speaker 1: to it because I'm watching that show. And then I
Speaker 1: was doing the research on this, and I was just like, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: a hundred hundred and fifty years ago, the only way
Speaker 1: that these these guys with e V would have gotten
Speaker 1: by is by being in some kind of quote unquote
Speaker 1: freak show, you know. Uh. And then and even then,
Speaker 1: there wouldn't have been any treatment for them. They probably
Speaker 1: would have succumbed to the cause, or rather the symptoms
Speaker 1: of the disease. Yeah, it's one of those situations where
Speaker 1: that the disease does in fact seems so rare that
Speaker 1: when when you look back through different myth cycles trying
Speaker 1: to find examples of where it might have occurred, and
Speaker 1: certainly it's possible cases of of e V occurred and
Speaker 1: we're just misdiagnosed and something like leprosy or some other
Speaker 1: duh deformity. But you don't, I mean, you see some
Speaker 1: examples of people turning into trees, uh and then turning
Speaker 1: into it two would in myth cycle and you know,
Speaker 1: and in literature, I mean certainly that the example that
Speaker 1: comes to my mind is the the wood of suicides
Speaker 1: in Dante's Inferno, and uh, and there are a few
Speaker 1: other cases as well, like there's um, you know, you
Speaker 1: can look to the case that the art of Hieronymous Bosh.
Speaker 1: You can see speaking trees in various myths. In some
Speaker 1: strains of Authorian legend, Merlin is turned into a tree,
Speaker 1: or he's imprisoned within a tree tree by the Lady
Speaker 1: of the lake. It's but but for the most part,
Speaker 1: you I mean, you have these other examples of petrification
Speaker 1: occurring in myths, but not so much like people becoming
Speaker 1: living trees. Which makes me wonder if like like that
Speaker 1: just underlines how rare it is that they didn't even
Speaker 1: really affect our our folklore and if it's a modern
Speaker 1: condition too, because as we'll discuss, uh, you know, the
Speaker 1: things that we that make it worse are somewhat industrial
Speaker 1: in nature, but uh, I don't know. I think of
Speaker 1: like D and D monsters, like dryads and things like
Speaker 1: that at or like Tolkien obviously Tolkien's ends, right, but
Speaker 1: those aren't even more than a hundred years old. I mean,
Speaker 1: dryads obviously exist within within myth and fairy tales and
Speaker 1: things like that, but uh, yeah, I don't know. There
Speaker 1: doesn't seem to be a lot of precedent for this,
Speaker 1: um And so that's one of the things that's really
Speaker 1: fascinating about this condition is whether or not it's brand
Speaker 1: new or if it's something that's just been hidden away
Speaker 1: carefully throughout throughout history. But yeah, it's it's unpleasant. Um.
Speaker 1: I guess let's get into like the details of just
Speaker 1: like what it is exactly, so we're not just kind
Speaker 1: of talking about, you know, the broad strokes of people
Speaker 1: who have barked growing off their bodies. So it's a
Speaker 1: condition in which your body becomes extremely suscepti susceptible to
Speaker 1: the human papaloma virus otherwise known as HPV. And what
Speaker 1: happens is you, you know, you take on that that
Speaker 1: virus it causes branch or bark like skin growths to
Speaker 1: develop across your entire body. And in most cases this
Speaker 1: is on the hands and feet. Uh. And they're basically
Speaker 1: malignant skin tumors. Uh. And when I'm saying, I mean,
Speaker 1: if you're listening to this and you're trying to picture
Speaker 1: it and you haven't seen it before we've posted about
Speaker 1: it on social I'm sure that the thumbnail for this
Speaker 1: episode will have some kind of image that will give
Speaker 1: you an idea of what it looks like. There's there's
Speaker 1: photos of two of the guys we're gonna talk about today.
Speaker 1: But it's it goes beyond just like your skin turning
Speaker 1: to bark. It's it literally looks like roots are growing
Speaker 1: out of your hands and feet and just huge growths
Speaker 1: to the point where, uh, these people can't function, they
Speaker 1: can't have jobs, they must be in pain, I would assume, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's out of control growth. It looks
Speaker 1: like it looks like some sort of a molding accident
Speaker 1: with like a plastic figuring that sort of thing, you know, Yeah, yeah, um.
Speaker 1: And what's also really interesting is some of the research basically,
Speaker 1: you know, they had come to a point where they
Speaker 1: were like, well, this is a thing that usually happens
Speaker 1: to people who are forty or older, but now most
Speaker 1: of the examples we're seeing are actually happening to people
Speaker 1: in the early years of life, which they think is
Speaker 1: because of a combination of uh, industrialized sort of ecosystems
Speaker 1: that we live in and working outdoors, and we'll get
Speaker 1: to that, but basically sunlight makes it worse, and also
Speaker 1: renal transplant recipients and immunosuppressed patients have an increased risk
Speaker 1: of developing these allegians that we're talking about here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's worth mentioning. So the immunosuppression here too. Obviously,
Speaker 1: you know, it made me think of this and then
Speaker 1: it does pop up in the literature. But it's a
Speaker 1: lot like HIV in the in the sense that the
Speaker 1: a lot of the literature compares the lesion growths to
Speaker 1: the same kind of lesions that some patients who have
Speaker 1: HIV get um, but they don't grow as out of
Speaker 1: control in HIV these case. Um. So, okay, we all
Speaker 1: hear HPV get thrown around a lot. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of like anti STD commercials on TV or at least
Speaker 1: at least at least the TV I'm watching. I get
Speaker 1: talked to about HPV all the time, but it's worth
Speaker 1: probably revisiting, I think. Right. So, human papilloma virus this
Speaker 1: is the kind of thing. It's a sexually transmitted infection.
Speaker 1: UH in the US. It belongs well, not just in
Speaker 1: the US, UH, it belongs to a family of more
Speaker 1: than a hundred and different strains of virus that can
Speaker 1: cause warts on your toes and your fingers, are all
Speaker 1: throughout your body. UM. Thirty in particular, of these hundred
Speaker 1: different strains are spread as an STD. Those infections are
Speaker 1: generally in the genital area, you know, for obvious reasons.
Speaker 1: And you actually mentioned too that we've we've known about
Speaker 1: hand plant are external and ano genital warts since antiquity,
Speaker 1: but it's only in the last hundred thirty years we've
Speaker 1: recognized laryn g awards and tream and disease as we're
Speaker 1: discussing here, and only since the sixties and seventies that
Speaker 1: we've made that connection to HPV. Yeah, And what's kind
Speaker 1: of interesting here is is there's a lot of academic
Speaker 1: research into this and it seems like they've pretty much
Speaker 1: got it nailed down in terms of like what causes it,
Speaker 1: why we why we get it, but that it's so
Speaker 1: h incredibly rare that there aren't a lot of case
Speaker 1: studies to operate with. Uh so, but with HPV, not
Speaker 1: with e V. There's no cure, but there's preventative vaccines
Speaker 1: and physicians can remove the infected tissue right probably the
Speaker 1: same way like I described with the good old liquid
Speaker 1: nitrogen being broken out. I had a wart on my
Speaker 1: finger for the longest time, and they did the same
Speaker 1: thing with that. They broke out the liquid nitrogen and
Speaker 1: then they took like a scalpel and dug out some
Speaker 1: of the stuff out of there. Afterwards, Um, yeah, my
Speaker 1: thing I had removed is like was right in the
Speaker 1: middle of my chest and like you can't even tell
Speaker 1: that it was there now, but it was. It was
Speaker 1: weird because that the like after I had it there
Speaker 1: was I had to to like not swim or do
Speaker 1: any kind of like yeah opening exercises, and every time
Speaker 1: I would even imagine it, I would imagine just like
Speaker 1: opening up my trip open, all my skin falling up. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's weird, especially like it's one of those things where
Speaker 1: it feels like your body is turning against you. And
Speaker 1: I'm just talking about these kind of like first world
Speaker 1: little growths that that you know, I've experienced where it's
Speaker 1: like I can't imagine just like your entire body just
Speaker 1: growing out of control like this. Well, as you get older,
Speaker 1: it's like your body changes his priorities where you know,
Speaker 1: you're you're you're asking the body. You're saying, hey, body,
Speaker 1: how about healing up this little you know, elbow injury
Speaker 1: I sustained. Can we get some forces working on that?
Speaker 1: And the bodies like, sorry, I gotta grow this nose
Speaker 1: hair And you're like, how does that make over? Here?
Speaker 1: This is more important? Well, you know, if if you
Speaker 1: don't know a lot about HPV, and I'll be honest,
Speaker 1: I didn't know a ton about it, but it's it's
Speaker 1: actually a pretty common thing. Twenty million America have it.
Speaker 1: That's why we see these commercials and such as a
Speaker 1: lot of like health warnings about it of sexually active
Speaker 1: people will get it at some point in their lives.
Speaker 1: Six point two million Americans. That's way more than listen
Speaker 1: to our show. But we'll like, we'd like to get
Speaker 1: every person who has HPV to listen to the show. Uh,
Speaker 1: they will get a new infection every year. And here's
Speaker 1: the thing, most people who get it don't even know
Speaker 1: it because they don't necessarily display the symptoms. They don't
Speaker 1: all get these growths, right Uh. And in rare cases,
Speaker 1: pregnant women who have HPV can pass it on to
Speaker 1: their babies during birth. What often happens in that rare case, uh,
Speaker 1: is the infants will get the growths in their throat
Speaker 1: or on their voice box. Um. So that sounds unpleasant,
Speaker 1: but but that's something that's fairly treatable. Like I said,
Speaker 1: there's a vaccine. U e V or tree man disease
Speaker 1: is basically like this gune totally haywire, just like the
Speaker 1: extreme exam bowl. And again, we can't emphasize enough how
Speaker 1: rare this is. So rare that it's only in our
Speaker 1: modern Uh. It's only with our modern population and the
Speaker 1: greatest population of humans ever and with our with our
Speaker 1: media integration. Uh that we've been that that that it's
Speaker 1: something that the average person might be aware of. Yeah, absolutely, uh. One.
Speaker 1: Just like last comparison with HPV, so in HPV, the
Speaker 1: growths are described as appearing as like soft cauliflower shaped lumps.
Speaker 1: And there's been a strong connection found between HPV, HPV
Speaker 1: and cervical cancer and women. So it is a major
Speaker 1: health concern. Uh, and we know that smoking and recreational
Speaker 1: drug use can make it worse because they suppress the
Speaker 1: immune system. So there you go that that kind of
Speaker 1: ties together with e V. Right, and that uh there's
Speaker 1: that suppressed immune system causing the growth to be a little,
Speaker 1: a little out of control. But also I wouldn't describe
Speaker 1: the growths with e V as soft cauliflower from what
Speaker 1: I've seen. Uh, there they look like bark, really looks
Speaker 1: like And there's a lot of scientific terms that will
Speaker 1: get into for like how how the different kinds of
Speaker 1: growths are defined, but uh, yeah, it's it's something entirely
Speaker 1: foreign to my experience. Okay. So one article that we
Speaker 1: turned to in particular that was just sort of like
Speaker 1: a a general overview of this disease is epidermisplasia varius,
Speaker 1: aformist colon and early and unusual presentation by Emson and Caballer,
Speaker 1: And they outline basically like a history of what we
Speaker 1: know about this disease and sort of where where we've
Speaker 1: gotten to with it. It was first described in ninety
Speaker 1: two by scientists lou Lewin Dowski and Lutts, so sometimes
Speaker 1: it's called Lewandowski and Lutts. Uh like dysplasia, I think,
Speaker 1: um so if you're having like, if you're looking for
Speaker 1: information about it, I found like obviously tree man disease
Speaker 1: pops up a lot of which is so does epidermis,
Speaker 1: p blajia, verisa formist. But there's also different stuff that's
Speaker 1: titled under the Lewandowski and Lutz heading as well. In
Speaker 1: ninety nine, that's when we found out there there was
Speaker 1: a relationship between it and high risk skin cancer, so
Speaker 1: they kind of put the two together U E. V.
Speaker 1: The way that it works is that there are mutations
Speaker 1: on two of our genes in the people who get it,
Speaker 1: ever one and ever two genes, and this is in
Speaker 1: particular on chromosome chromosome seventeen Q two five. Now, there
Speaker 1: was a lot of academic literature on the genetics behind this,
Speaker 1: but it went way over my head and I felt
Speaker 1: like it wouldn't be particularly useful to us or to
Speaker 1: the audience. But just know there's a lot out there
Speaker 1: if you're if you know your genetics and you want
Speaker 1: to learn more about this, there's plenty to be found. Um,
Speaker 1: what basically from what I could gather is that it
Speaker 1: causes a defect of cell mediated community and this leads
Speaker 1: the patients to be abnormally susceptible to the HPV uh.
Speaker 1: And in some studies they said that it's specifically HPV
Speaker 1: five and eight and then sometimes HPV fourteen, seventeen, twenty
Speaker 1: and forty seven. Those are the ones that tend to
Speaker 1: cause the bark growths. And these mutations have also been found.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of research on this, but it was
Speaker 1: also pretty impenetrable to me with my background. Uh. It's
Speaker 1: found to inhibit and bote and complicate zinc distribution in
Speaker 1: the human body, so that may also have something to
Speaker 1: do with these weird growths as well. So the bark
Speaker 1: here is described as an eruption of macules and papules
Speaker 1: that are war like. So I guess this is where
Speaker 1: like the soft color flower, it may look hard in
Speaker 1: the pictures, but it's probably you know, war like in texture. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And again, like in the in the research, there was
Speaker 1: a lot of uh, just really in depth description of
Speaker 1: the types of growths using words that I had no
Speaker 1: idea what it or. Uh. So they'll they'll actually also
Speaker 1: be other cutaneous lesions that form as well, and maybe
Speaker 1: some of these are a bit harder. Uh, and these
Speaker 1: are similar to what are found on AIDS patients as
Speaker 1: as we've already mentioned scaly patches, etcetera. Now, these malignancies
Speaker 1: don't usually manifest until at least forty years of age,
Speaker 1: but because of more outdoor occupation and sun exposure. And
Speaker 1: this is key because we may come back to this
Speaker 1: with some related conditions. It's now beginning to showing younger people.
Speaker 1: So because sun exposure can hasten the transformation, especially if
Speaker 1: the patient is living at a high altitude. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: seems to be another factor that they're concerned about. All Right,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a break and we come back. We're
Speaker 1: going to discuss uh what we know about the treatment
Speaker 1: of of e V. And we may also discuss just
Speaker 1: a few related conditions that involve hardened skin growths. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we're back. There have been many treatments that have
Speaker 1: been tried on e V or tree man disease, and
Speaker 1: I have to be honest that they have either been
Speaker 1: ineffective or had only temporary results. So we've got oral
Speaker 1: and topical retinoids that have been used interfere on immunotherapy,
Speaker 1: electro desiccation. That sounds brutal. Yeah, this is uh basically
Speaker 1: what this consists of. It's essentially like an electro cauterizing tool,
Speaker 1: so you're you're you're destroying the tissue directly, uh, and
Speaker 1: you're also preventing bleeding from from happening. Okay. That sounds
Speaker 1: kind of like what I had with that war, Like
Speaker 1: they scraped it off with a blade and then they
Speaker 1: applied the liquid nitrogen like directly like open skin to
Speaker 1: basically destroy the tissue. Yeah. Yeah, It's apparently a pretty
Speaker 1: common dermatology technique. Okay. And the last one listed here
Speaker 1: is cryrotherapy, which I imagine is what I had, uh
Speaker 1: with using the liquid nitrogen. Okay. Some of the research indicates, however,
Speaker 1: that if you apply radiotherapy to this, it may actually
Speaker 1: cause the malignant transformations of skin lesions, so it makes
Speaker 1: it worse. So that kind of goes in whether we're
Speaker 1: talking about earlier with the exposure to the fun Yeah exactly,
Speaker 1: And this is what led them to think like, oh,
Speaker 1: maybe you know these people who have this genetic mutation
Speaker 1: combined with working outdoors. Uh is somehow, you know, causing
Speaker 1: these two to overgrow when they normally wouldn't UM. So,
Speaker 1: the most effective thing that they have available right now
Speaker 1: is surgical treatment, and it's basically doctors going in and
Speaker 1: exercising the growths and then grafting other skin flaps over
Speaker 1: them as a replacement um. And during surgery, these doctors
Speaker 1: have to be really careful because they don't want to
Speaker 1: hurt any major nerves or cause any other health issues.
Speaker 1: But I mean, like again, like if you've seen the
Speaker 1: photos of people who are afflicted with this, it's pretty
Speaker 1: hard to tell what you would be carving into, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean I imagine, like, let's take the hand just
Speaker 1: as an example, like the structure of the skeletal structure
Speaker 1: and the uh you know, blood and dermis and all
Speaker 1: that that's in your hand would be there. But then
Speaker 1: there's just this massive pounds and pounds of bark like
Speaker 1: growths over it. So you've got to take it pretty slowly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, in a sense, and this is simplifying, you're
Speaker 1: kind of having to to carve the original form out
Speaker 1: of the extra tissue. Yeah. So we have two examples
Speaker 1: that we're going to touch on today, and these are
Speaker 1: relatively recent during the last like ten years UM. And
Speaker 1: from what I could find, other than these two guys,
Speaker 1: there was like one other person that was a named
Speaker 1: case study uh and he was in Romania. And then
Speaker 1: a lot of the other research referred to people that
Speaker 1: they used as case studies. But I imagine that those
Speaker 1: patients wanted their identities to be anonymous, so they didn't
Speaker 1: use names, but they would say, like, for instance, like
Speaker 1: one of the big case studies looked at a girl
Speaker 1: who had worked on a farm at a high altitude,
Speaker 1: worked outdoors, been exposed to a lot of sunlight. She
Speaker 1: had tree man disease UH, and they were able to
Speaker 1: they basically walked through like here's how it developed, here's
Speaker 1: how the surgery went with her, YadA, YadA. But they
Speaker 1: never named her. The two big ones that we know of,
Speaker 1: the first is a guy named Abul Bajendra and he's
Speaker 1: in Bangladesh and he uh this is relatively recently, slowly
Speaker 1: lost his ability to work as these dozens of two
Speaker 1: to three inch roots grew out of his hand uh.
Speaker 1: And he was a bicycle puller. That was his job
Speaker 1: and he had to stop doing it. I imagine that's
Speaker 1: from my experiences in Southeast Asia. I imagine that's like
Speaker 1: when you pull like a tuck tuck like carriage or
Speaker 1: something like that. Yeah. Um. And then so what happened
Speaker 1: was there was a team of surgeons at DOCA Medical
Speaker 1: College Hospital that found out about his condition and they
Speaker 1: offered to remove his growths, and the hospital itself way
Speaker 1: of the costs. But it required multiple operations over time
Speaker 1: to remove eleven pounds of growths from his hands and feet.
Speaker 1: And there is an interview with his sister and she
Speaker 1: said before that just hundreds of people would come and
Speaker 1: visit his home over the years just to witness quote
Speaker 1: unquote the tree man. Right. So there is a kind
Speaker 1: of like mythical sort of I think, like uh, supernatural
Speaker 1: quality to it, you know that that people probably are like, oh,
Speaker 1: what is this thing? Yeah? I mean people would just
Speaker 1: want to know why does this occur? Not only medically
Speaker 1: but also teleologically. You know. In fact, when I was
Speaker 1: doing some research for this one and trying to find
Speaker 1: some some additional studies on it, like I found a
Speaker 1: blog where where somebody's devoted entire blog to like disproving Christianity,
Speaker 1: and this was one of their examples, they were like
Speaker 1: this this exists, therefore there can be no God um,
Speaker 1: which you know, I'm not going to get into the
Speaker 1: particulars of that argument because I don't think it's quite
Speaker 1: as simple as that, but but certainly, like that's the
Speaker 1: kind of response people have, Like you see something like this,
Speaker 1: and you have how does this fit into my worldview
Speaker 1: that this is occurring? Uh? And then you know, how
Speaker 1: does it fit into my worldview that this is how
Speaker 1: we we treat these people and this is how some
Speaker 1: of these people end up getting actual treatment for their condition. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Based on a lot of like the stuff we've covered
Speaker 1: in the past on the show, especially like thinking about
Speaker 1: you know, for instance, the history of witchcraft, I could
Speaker 1: very easily see like something like this happening to somebody
Speaker 1: in a village, doesn't matter where the village is, uh,
Speaker 1: and the people in that society going, oh, they've been cursed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like if I remember, someone is to blame, Yeah, if
Speaker 1: I remember correctly. In Britain, one of the big witch
Speaker 1: hunting tropes was that the witch would have a familiar,
Speaker 1: which you know means hey, there's a straight cat in
Speaker 1: that neighborhood or fields it's act like you virtually little
Speaker 1: or nothing that you need to trump up that charge.
Speaker 1: But then the additional charges that since it is some
Speaker 1: sort of a demonic familiar she has an extra nipple
Speaker 1: on her body, defeat it. And of course all you
Speaker 1: need for that is just like the smallest skin tag
Speaker 1: skin tag or award, and then yeah, that's all you need. Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: So Yeah, so this kind of thing I could see.
Speaker 1: And this is this is what's particularly weird to us
Speaker 1: about this is any time we've ever covered sort of
Speaker 1: a medical curiosity like this, there is like a lineage,
Speaker 1: like a trace throughout history of how it's been mythologized
Speaker 1: or viewed by people. Tree man disease just doesn't seem
Speaker 1: to pop up. Yeah, not specifically anyway. I mean, certainly
Speaker 1: they're deformed characters throughout mythology and folklore, but but those
Speaker 1: probably seem like different things. Like you know, we talked
Speaker 1: about the elephant man at the top. Clearly that was
Speaker 1: a very different condition. Yeah. Well, so there's the other
Speaker 1: guy that's relatively I guess famous for having this disease.
Speaker 1: He was in Indonesia's name was Day Day or d D.
Speaker 1: Kaswara Uh and He had thirteen pounds or six kilograms
Speaker 1: of these warts surgically removed from his body. He was
Speaker 1: operated on at the Hassan Sadecan Hospital in West Java.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing, Uh, he went through the surgery surgery
Speaker 1: process and uh, even after the surgeries, they just kept returning.
Speaker 1: You know, It's it's there right Like he he doesn't
Speaker 1: have the genes for the to have an immune system
Speaker 1: that will suppress HPV, so it's just continually going. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's that's heartbreaking to think. I've imagine just going
Speaker 1: through this, this tremendous surgery to rid yourself of these
Speaker 1: growth and then they come back. Uh. And so this
Speaker 1: was a guy that was highlighted in a lot of
Speaker 1: Western media. Uh. He even appeared on our our old employers,
Speaker 1: the Discovery Channel. I believe they had some kind of
Speaker 1: a documentary or maybe a TV series episode about him.
Speaker 1: So maybe some of you out there had seen something
Speaker 1: like that. In fact, when I posted a picture not
Speaker 1: of him, but of the guy from Bangladesh on on
Speaker 1: Facebook yesterday, a lot of people said, oh, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I saw that on TV. I remember seeing this guy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and again it's it's weird. It puts me in a
Speaker 1: weird place to to see that sort of thing, because
Speaker 1: on one hand, it's great that, say, a TV production
Speaker 1: company is going to pay for someone like this to
Speaker 1: get the treatment they need. But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: you get into that elephant man area right right to
Speaker 1: what extent is this exploitation? Um? Yeah? And in fact,
Speaker 1: Discovery paid for some of his medical bills for him
Speaker 1: to have these multiple surgeries over and over again. Uh
Speaker 1: so yeah, it is. It's a little I don't know,
Speaker 1: it feels like there's an ethical quandary there, and I
Speaker 1: don't know where I quite come down on it, right, So,
Speaker 1: like thinking about it from our perspective, because obviously we
Speaker 1: are part of the media. If you're listening to us
Speaker 1: out there, you know, you're probably going, hey, Robert and Christian,
Speaker 1: you guys are you know, being a little facetious here,
Speaker 1: But we we recognize that, right. But it's sort of like, uh,
Speaker 1: we wouldn't be able to fully cover and bring to
Speaker 1: you the information about this disease if those these two
Speaker 1: cases did Cassara and um Apple Gendre, if those weren't
Speaker 1: thoroughly covered by the media. And that's where I first
Speaker 1: found out about it, and then got the idea, let's
Speaker 1: dig further into the academic literature. Otherwise, you know, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't have known about it unless like I was a
Speaker 1: genetic student or something like that, right, um. And yet
Speaker 1: at the same time, it's sort of like, uh, it
Speaker 1: feels a little gross the way that they are. I
Speaker 1: don't know if exploited is the right word or not,
Speaker 1: but but you know, like, so, so I'll give you
Speaker 1: an example. And we may or may not use these
Speaker 1: pictures for the thumbnails for the episode, but I think, well,
Speaker 1: at the very least, we'll have at least have the
Speaker 1: pictures of the condition on the landing page for the episode,
Speaker 1: so yeah, you know you'll be able to see speaking
Speaker 1: see it there. In the case of Mr Bajendra, the photos,
Speaker 1: you know, there's something like I don't know in our
Speaker 1: stock photo collection, like twenty photos of of him in
Speaker 1: various angles, holding up his hands or holding up his
Speaker 1: feet or sitting in an awkward position to showcase his disease.
Speaker 1: And as I was looking at I was like, well,
Speaker 1: this is useful because it gives us a visual representation
Speaker 1: of it. But then at the same time, like I
Speaker 1: could just see that this guy was uncomfortable, he felt
Speaker 1: weird about it. Uh. He didn't quite know what to
Speaker 1: do with himself, you know. And you could tell, like
Speaker 1: off camera there was somebody who was like, Okay, can't you,
Speaker 1: you know, tilt your hand a little bit more this
Speaker 1: way or whatever, and he just looks, you know, like
Speaker 1: a deer in headlights, like he's scared, you know. Uh,
Speaker 1: And so that that feels weird. But getting back to
Speaker 1: kaskas Wara, Sorry I'm probably butchering these names. He very
Speaker 1: first noticed his condition after he cut his knee when
Speaker 1: he was a teen nature, which is interesting to me, Like,
Speaker 1: I don't know how that connects, especially given like what
Speaker 1: we know about high altitudes and sunlight and such and
Speaker 1: and uh, but like maybe the way it healed, like yeah, um,
Speaker 1: but it it ultimately led to ruin for him, you know,
Speaker 1: as these growths grew out of control, he lost his job,
Speaker 1: his wife left him, he was shunned by his family. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then you know, the sad part of this is
Speaker 1: is that even after getting all of these surgeries, just
Speaker 1: recently in the last couple of months, he passed away. Uh.
Speaker 1: And as far as I can tell, it was a
Speaker 1: result of complications I don't know if it was necessarily
Speaker 1: from e V, but he had complications with hepatitis, liver,
Speaker 1: and gastric disorders. Uh, and so maybe the the e
Speaker 1: V was somehow affecting those, or maybe it was just
Speaker 1: another condition he had entirely. Yeah, I think a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of our fascination with it comes down
Speaker 1: to the fact that this is kind of an extreme
Speaker 1: and just overtly visual example of what so many of
Speaker 1: our bodies eventually do. Our bodies eventually developed problems that
Speaker 1: mess up our lives and in many cases in our lives. So,
Speaker 1: you know, we this is just kind of an outrageous
Speaker 1: and arguably monstrous example of of of a of a
Speaker 1: reality that we're all going to face. Yeah, it's especially
Speaker 1: uh you know, like there's there's that kind of old trope,
Speaker 1: especially in horror literature, which you out there know that
Speaker 1: Robert and I are fond of, uh, the idea of
Speaker 1: decaying beauty, right, Uh, and that especially in Western culture
Speaker 1: that like we prize our good luck so much that
Speaker 1: when they start to fade, will do anything to keep them. Uh.
Speaker 1: The old Dorian Gray myth right, our story, it's not
Speaker 1: really myth. Oscar Oscar Wilde wrote a story Penny Dreadful
Speaker 1: Again during Crazy Character Yeah, uh and uh yeah, it
Speaker 1: makes me think of I just started reading this comic
Speaker 1: book that's kind of related. It's called The Beauty, and
Speaker 1: the premise of the comic book is that there's a
Speaker 1: there's a sexually transmitted disease called the Beauty, and if
Speaker 1: you get it, you your body basically becomes beautiful, become
Speaker 1: more sexually attractive. Like the side effects the symptoms of
Speaker 1: the disease make you skinnier, make your skin look clearer.
Speaker 1: Uh and and so you subsequently, subsequently you have people
Speaker 1: walking around who all look like supermodels, and it seems
Speaker 1: like from what I've read so far, at least in
Speaker 1: the first issue, uh, they spontaneously combust after a while.
Speaker 1: Oh well, you know, that's about how it goes. That
Speaker 1: might be a problems. That's how it goes for beautiful
Speaker 1: people in our world. And you just you go out
Speaker 1: in a blaze of glory. But yeah, that's where the
Speaker 1: fascination with this comes from. I think, right like, people
Speaker 1: see this and they go, oh my god, that's my
Speaker 1: worst nightmare. Because like I had a mole that I
Speaker 1: had to have removed, whereas like you know this, these
Speaker 1: these poorer guys can barely move their hands, they can't
Speaker 1: operate tools, they can't do their jobs or wives leave
Speaker 1: them all that stuff. It's rough, all right. So at
Speaker 1: this point you're probably wondering, well, okay, this is this
Speaker 1: is one extremely rare condition, But aren't there other conditions
Speaker 1: that can petrify uh flesh that indeed may have informed
Speaker 1: some of these myth cycles that we've alluded to. Well, yes,
Speaker 1: there are, there are several conditions. We're gonna just run
Speaker 1: through four known conditions that I think are good examples
Speaker 1: of of the sort of thing happening elsewhere in the
Speaker 1: world of disease. First of all, there's five row dysplacea
Speaker 1: also funds Progress CIVA or fo P FOP. We actually
Speaker 1: have a long detailed article about this at how stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Uh, you just put FOP in there,
Speaker 1: you will get to it. This is really it's not
Speaker 1: just pictures of me um. Why do you have any
Speaker 1: history with FOP or just or is that the palm
Speaker 1: age using it? Yeah, my foppish nature. So this condition
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with the floppish nature or hair only.
Speaker 1: It is an extremely rare connective tissue disease, and it
Speaker 1: involves the ossification of fibrous tissue, including muscle, tendon and
Speaker 1: ligaments due them due to mutation of the body's repair mechanisms.
Speaker 1: So this sounds very similar. Yeah. Yeah, it's like the
Speaker 1: body is like stuff that is not bone turns to
Speaker 1: bone and it's you know, it's a horrible condition, but
Speaker 1: it's a very real condition and it's extremely rare, but
Speaker 1: more common than ev you know what this is reminding
Speaker 1: me of from popular culture And I don't know if
Speaker 1: he got if he cooked this up from from something
Speaker 1: or if he just you know, made it up off
Speaker 1: the top of his head. In Game of Thrones, there's
Speaker 1: that disease gray scale that they get. I wonder if
Speaker 1: that is something from like E V that he uh,
Speaker 1: maybe read about, or maybe maybe from FOP from what
Speaker 1: we were maybe. So I feel like there's like, definitely
Speaker 1: that leprosy was definitely an influence on that condition. I'm
Speaker 1: also reminded of one on the show Look Around You.
Speaker 1: They had a condition called cobbles where it was, uh,
Speaker 1: this is a look around You as a show that
Speaker 1: some of our listeners might be familiar with. It was
Speaker 1: a britt of brilliant British satire of educational films, and
Speaker 1: the second season, which was kind of like a kid's
Speaker 1: weird science kind of show like that was there there,
Speaker 1: what they were parenting? They and they roll out this
Speaker 1: character who has cobbles and so he's essentially just a
Speaker 1: big pile of rocks, voiced by one of the actors
Speaker 1: that went on to play a part in A Little Britain.
Speaker 1: Oh really, okay, okay, yeah, you know it sounded familiar
Speaker 1: and now I think that maybe why I've seen it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so maybe I don't know, maybe Cobbles was an influence
Speaker 1: on George. Cobbles influenced gray scale and yeah, if I
Speaker 1: remember correctly from the Lower and Game of Thrones, was
Speaker 1: it like if you're touched by somebody with gray scale,
Speaker 1: then you also get gray scale? I think so, like
Speaker 1: it's pretty easy to contract and certainly seemed to to
Speaker 1: to shadow leopardsy. Yeah, okay, so we've got some other
Speaker 1: ones here. Yes, there's also Lifeopedean babies or stone babies. Uh.
Speaker 1: These are formed when a fetus growing outside of the
Speaker 1: uterus dies. They're too large for reabsorption, so they calcify
Speaker 1: this is extremely rare. They're about three d known cases
Speaker 1: and they generally occur with a topic pregnancy. So these
Speaker 1: are embryo implants that occur somewhere other than the uterus,
Speaker 1: you know what. I feel like I've seen an example
Speaker 1: of this before. Uh. And I maybe talked about this
Speaker 1: on this show before, and maybe I just talked to
Speaker 1: you about it off air. Uh. Mrs In Jemmy, have
Speaker 1: I talked to you about her before? She is a
Speaker 1: pathologist or maybe she's a pathologist assistant who has an
Speaker 1: Instagram account of all the stuff that comes through her
Speaker 1: lab and it's fascinating. And she started doing a YouTube
Speaker 1: series and someone brought in a fetus in a jar
Speaker 1: that they had in like a curiosity shop or something
Speaker 1: like that, and I want to say, and maybe misremembering this,
Speaker 1: but that it had calcified. And she was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: this is the stone baby thing. Is this related to
Speaker 1: the Muti Museum? Uh? You know what? I because I
Speaker 1: feel like I read that they have one of these. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that might be it. I don't think that the version
Speaker 1: that was brought to her was from the muter Museum.
Speaker 1: But she's in I want to say, she's in New
Speaker 1: York and muters in Philadelphia, right, so it's not that
Speaker 1: far away from one another. Cool. Yeah, there's also a
Speaker 1: there's also a really good Jezebel article about stone babies,
Speaker 1: so I'll have to link to that on the landing
Speaker 1: page for this episode. Al right. Next, of course there's
Speaker 1: and this is another one that light tree man disease
Speaker 1: has gained a lot of traction with just sort of
Speaker 1: like look at this picture sharing on social media, and
Speaker 1: that is cutaneous horns. So these are unusual, you know,
Speaker 1: carroteen skin tumors. They may look like horns, they may
Speaker 1: look like wood or even coral. Uh. And this in
Speaker 1: one of the main causes here seems to be radiation
Speaker 1: exposure to hands or face especially or they can also
Speaker 1: emerge from burn wounds, but certainly exposure to the sun
Speaker 1: can play a role in um, you in strengthening the effect. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I could see those being especially tantalizing in the world
Speaker 1: of social media, especially um when we did that article
Speaker 1: and transdermal implants on how stuff works, that was a
Speaker 1: huge hit, and that's people giving themselves horns. So I
Speaker 1: imagine if if it's sort of a like uh uh disease,
Speaker 1: then it's it's going to attract some attention as well. Yeah, indeed,
Speaker 1: and and with cutainous horns, you know, the treatment is
Speaker 1: a little simpler and it also tends to be less
Speaker 1: of a severe manifestation, you know. It's so it's it's
Speaker 1: easier to deal with, but also rare. And then finally this, uh,
Speaker 1: this last example is also thankfully very rare because it
Speaker 1: concerns uh a few individuals of the of what are
Speaker 1: known in Japan is the uh hyvakusha or the explosion
Speaker 1: affected people UH. And this is an individuals who survived
Speaker 1: the atomic bomb blast at the close of the Second
Speaker 1: World War. UM in particular, some Hiroshiama bombs of Iver's
Speaker 1: apparently manifested strange rod shaped black nail growths. So essentially
Speaker 1: what happened is they lost their nails and the explosion
Speaker 1: and they were horribly burnt. But then out of the wounds,
Speaker 1: these black rods grew out and they weren't just typical
Speaker 1: nails because they had active blood vessels inside them, so
Speaker 1: if they broke, they would bleed. Yeah, it's horrible, horrible situation. Say,
Speaker 1: And like I say, luckily this is not something that
Speaker 1: has occurred with the sort of regularity that would allow
Speaker 1: it to be studied in. Yeah, it was almost gonna
Speaker 1: make it. Well, yeah, I was going to make a
Speaker 1: joke and now I'll metta tell you about the joke
Speaker 1: I was going to make our colleague Josh Clark from
Speaker 1: stuff you should know. I don't know what he did,
Speaker 1: like maybe he slammed his fingernail into a door or
Speaker 1: something like that, but he had a black fingernail for
Speaker 1: a couple of months last year, and when we were
Speaker 1: shooting video for series like brain Stuffer for this stuff
Speaker 1: you should know video series, all the comments and YouTube,
Speaker 1: they were just hyper fixated on the black fingernail and
Speaker 1: we probably just had it was like blood, I think
Speaker 1: that's what it was. Yeah, but you know, Josh like
Speaker 1: he didn't want to respond or tell anybody what actually happened,
Speaker 1: so we would just kind of mess with people after
Speaker 1: a while. And uh so I was going to say, like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: that black fingernails, that's what Josh has. Turns out it
Speaker 1: is way worse. That is horrifying. Yeah. Yeah, and certainly
Speaker 1: if you want more dis horrifying, not intern only in
Speaker 1: terms of like this is a horrifying example of what
Speaker 1: can happen to human body. But just like this is
Speaker 1: a horrifying example of where humanity can go. Certainly there's
Speaker 1: some other resources out there on the internet about the
Speaker 1: explosion affected people. Okay, well that do we how do
Speaker 1: we dig our way out of that? That is really Yeah,
Speaker 1: we've we've really given you a plethora of terrible diseases.
Speaker 1: Uh to listen to us talk about uh and maybe
Speaker 1: think some more about uh, you know, after you've listened
Speaker 1: to the podcast. I am, however, curious, because I know
Speaker 1: a lot of scientists and grad students listen to this show.
Speaker 1: If there's information out there about any of these things,
Speaker 1: but in particular about tree man disease or e V
Speaker 1: that we missed and that you you know, you want
Speaker 1: to make sure that we get out there to our listeners,
Speaker 1: please write in and tell us about it. We can
Speaker 1: share that in a future episode. Yeah, and I would.
Speaker 1: I would also challenge everybody that because pictures like this
Speaker 1: that go around UH and and little sort of you know,
Speaker 1: shallow news stories about individuals with the deformities of strange
Speaker 1: medical con conditions, these are not going to go away. Dude.
Speaker 1: This is just a part of being on the internet.
Speaker 1: So I would just challenge everybody that, as these examples
Speaker 1: come up in your Facebook feed or and you know,
Speaker 1: your whatever, your news service of choices, Uh, look at
Speaker 1: yourself a little bit, like do a little self reflection
Speaker 1: and you know, ask yourself, why am I drawn to this?
Speaker 1: Why can I not look away? What does this say
Speaker 1: about the human condition? Was to say about me? And
Speaker 1: then also you know, go a little deeper if possible,
Speaker 1: if the material presents itself, to find out a little
Speaker 1: more about who the person is and then what the
Speaker 1: condition is. Well put, Yeah, I mean that's something that
Speaker 1: we often try to do because it's work for us.
Speaker 1: It's our job. But so for instance, like I'll see
Speaker 1: a link to something like a tree man photo on
Speaker 1: like the Daily Mail or something like that, right, and
Speaker 1: that maybe like a starting point, But for me, I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: I want to dig deeper here. I want to find
Speaker 1: out some more about this and also like what's going on?
Speaker 1: Why is this something I'm attracted to? Right? So, like
Speaker 1: we talked about in like our previous episodes about Wicked
Speaker 1: Problems are also the Cargoism episode that we did, right, Like,
Speaker 1: there's a little bit more participation that's available to us.
Speaker 1: As citizens now in science, right, not just as consumers
Speaker 1: of basically you know, just what would be like moderny
Speaker 1: equivalent of of a freak show, right, Like like when
Speaker 1: you click on that, it's the equivalent of paying a
Speaker 1: nickel to walk through, uh, and to see the tree
Speaker 1: man or whatever. Right, and and maybe give it a
Speaker 1: little bit more thought than that. And also you know
Speaker 1: what these poor individuals are going through. Indeed, now on
Speaker 1: that high note, if you want to write to us
Speaker 1: and tell us some more. Maybe you know more about this,
Speaker 1: Maybe you're a geneticist, that would be great, and you
Speaker 1: understand all the scientific jargon that I couldn't penetrate. Let
Speaker 1: us know the best ways to get in touch with us. First,
Speaker 1: you can start on social media. We're on them, pretty much,
Speaker 1: all of them were on Facebook, we're on Twitter, we're
Speaker 1: on tumbler, and we are on Instagram. Now, uh and
Speaker 1: where else? What's the good old fashioned way they can
Speaker 1: reach out to Well, first of all, of course, there's
Speaker 1: stuff to blow your mind dot com and that's where
Speaker 1: you'll find this podcast, all the other podcast blog post
Speaker 1: videos links to those social media accounts. And also there
Speaker 1: is a rumbling that the website will will become updated
Speaker 1: in the months ahead. There's no definite timeline on that,
Speaker 1: but we're excited about seeing a facelift that happened there.
Speaker 1: And then Yeah, the old old fashioned way is to
Speaker 1: just shoot us an email, and you can do that
Speaker 1: by writing us at Blow the Mind how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Speaker 1: Is it how stuff Works dot com. The big