Doomed to Fail - Ep 98 - The Never-ending Story: Henrietta Lacks

Episode Date: April 1, 2024

Today, we are closing out Women's History Month with the story of Henrietta Lacks. Henrietta died of cervical cancer in 1951 - but her cells have lived on. They divide and duplicate at such a rate that if you could gather all the HeLa cells in one spot they could weigh 50 tons. They have been used in creating vaccines, researching cancer, and mapping the human genome. All the while, Henrietta's family didn't know that this was happening and would get asked for DNA samples and blood tests every so often.We recommend learning more by reading "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot. Sources:https://www.amazon.com/Immortal-Life-Henrietta-Lacks/dp/1400052181 https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/the-double-edged-helix-231322/https://www.elle.com/life-love/a39586444/how-serena-williams-saved-her-own-life/https://research.unc.edu/human-research-ethics/resources/ccm3_019064/https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3440234/https://www.atcc.org/products/ccl-2https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-11934633/The-19-states-marry-cousin-despite-inbreeding-risks.html Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

It's a matter of the people of the state of California versus Hortonthal James Simpson, case number B.A.019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for you. We are recording and we are on the air live being broadcast to all 50 major media markets around the world. Hi, Taylor. How are you? I'm good. How are you? I'm good, not as good as you.

I'm very excited for. you and for your upcoming travels, Taylor is on her way to Japan on, or tomorrow. Yeah, I'm very nervous and excited. Are you nervous about the flight? Is that it? Yeah, I just don't like flying, but I'm going to be fine. Kiara, our friend who is a fan of ours, she sent me some stuff about flying, which is very nice of her. Yeah, I'm just not stoked about it, but it'll be okay. did you choose bigger seats or better seats or how did you do it no we just have like regular seats because

i mean i'm not a millionaire oh you're not no no i got to stop asking you to sending money then because this whole time i assumed you were i am tired of sending you all my cash yeah always um well welcome to doom to fail this is the podcast we cover doomed to fail topics and we have a ton fans and supporters around the world that we love and adore, and we're going to probably get a few new ones as Taylor makes your way into Japan and shares stickers and content

and guerrilla marketing tactics. You know, honestly, I didn't even think of that. I'll bring stickers. I want to see if anybody in Japan has listened. Looking at a map. Yes. Ooh. I feel like there's 19 downloads from Tokyo.

I feel like Lindsay's out as you? Or is it like other people? well there's not 19 lynxes I know maybe she listened to 19 episodes oh I see I see someone in Tawasaki and went 90 Tokyo that's in the past seven days about all time

yeah no I'm very very very excited I'm very nervous but I'm very excited I'm nervous with the planes I just hate flying and it's 12 hours long so like that it's gonna suck but I'm gonna survive and I can't wait one of my friends just got back from Tokyo and she was constantly posting pictures, man, the food looks otherworldly good. It looks like, there's a place here in Austin called them Uchi, and they have like three locations.

One's Uchiko, once Uchee, one's Uchee, one's Uchiba. And it's like this premier pristine. It's like where you go on your anniversary, you know? Like it's one of those kinds of places. She was posting pictures from like truck stops there that like looked as good. And I was like, what? Like, how is this? I know.

I've heard that like there's like a tuna and rice thing at 7-Eleven. It's really good. There's like a ton of 7-Eleven. That's like a big thing there. So I'm excited to like see that. And then lawn has made like a thousand reservations for like all sorts of activities and shows and trains and events. And yeah. Yeah.

It has the distinction of it is the only place where I've heard people who have gone to and they will not stop. operating about it. Like a lot of people go to Hawaii, a lot of people go to other parts of the world. They're like, yeah, it's great. It's awesome. We had a great time. But Japan's the only one where I'm like, when I talk to you about it, like, you're not going to understand. Like, it's literally like another planet. And it's looking forward to being insufferable about it. No, listen. You don't understand you've been to Japan. It's, it's, it's, you don't get it, you haven't been to Japan. All you do is just ask me for my millions. You don't understand the other side of life.

there's a comedian on Instagram she does like people who come back from vacation and it's so funny because she's like oh I was there for two days but she like has an accent

and like you know whatever is it's like hilarious the Madonna effect of having a British accent yeah exactly exactly well awesome awesome we're really excited about that

it's probably gonna have some impact on a recording schedule for the next week but whatever we'll sort out well so here's what I've been doing the past couple days It's Laura Ramoso, by the way, on Instagram. So I have scheduled six re-releases.

So one for next week that will be with whatever we're doing. And then, like, well, I did it me yesterday. And then five for the week that I'm on spring break. And then I have all those social media scheduled. I have all the YouTube videos scheduled. So, like, everything is ready. There will still be content. Should we be telling people this as opposed to making them think that we're just doing this constantly, like, in the moment?

No, because I literally said to be released, so they wouldn't know. Whatever, Taylor, your facts have no place here. They're smart. Well, thank you, thank you, though, for doing all that work because I know it's not easy and it's got to take a ton of time, so appreciate that. So I guess new episode-wise, we'll rejoin you in a few weeks or so. Yeah, we'll record on April. I'll be home April 13th.

It's still recording April 14th. Easy, easy. you'll be asleep April 14th or whatever we'll try it we'll do weekend I mean I'm going to Who the fuck knows So one thing I This is almost going to sound mean

And I don't mean it mean Okay So I kind of envy how short you and one are Because Oh no totally Y'all can actually be on planes and semi be comfortable.

I can't imagine being an inch taller than I am, and I'm like 5.3 at best. If I was 5, 5, I'd be like, this is too much for me. I can't imagine being, how tall are you? 6-1. Oh, my God, that sounds terrible. It is. Well, it's good in, like, day-to-day life.

Of course, but it is. I mean, on a plane, you know, like, how we're interested in a thing. Yeah. It reminds me of our former CEO, so Taylor and I's former CEO was, like, what, like seven? one or something like he was super super tall and he had this like acro that he got forever ago like a normal acro sedan and when you saw him driving it he did the thing where he laid the seat all the way back yeah but you thought he was trying to be cool but no he literally couldn't fit

like his most of his legs and waist was on the part that your a normal person's back goes on like you couldn't sit behind him yeah yeah yeah no he was so tall um yeah i can't i can't i mean if if i was you know seven feet tall i would have to pay for a first class seat or whatever or something you know like i couldn't you just couldn't yeah i don't get like if if anybody is like that tall or like in these i would say six seven and above range is probably when you get into that kind of territory and you're not super wealthy like how do you survive i don't get it like you just never travel like i don't understand how you can get by i don't know my friend nate is like six five and he flew in like the middle seat and like dealt the economy i'm like

you're what i don't know like you just like probably couldn't move his body at all you know no it's awful it's awful i just came back from uh that that my most recent trip and i was on southwest and sitting in the plane and my knees were i had indentation marks on my knees from where they were in the seat in front of me because they literally i had nowhere to put them. I know. I know. And I feel uncomfortable and I'm much shorter than. I went up to the gate agent and was like, hey, listen, I would really, really appreciate if you could, I book kind of last minute. I would really appreciate you put me into either an aisle seat or if you can have someone come here and break my leg so I can fit in the middle seat that you have assigned to me. And she did

not find that funny at all. Oh, that's too bad. It's like she made me that little charming. Thank you. Also, speaking of, speaking of Jim, buying that, Acura, I have to get a new call. car. My car is officially totaled. They're not going to fix it. That kind of sucks, Taylor. That really, really does suck. It does suck. Anybody who has recommendations on a car, let me know. Because, I mean, luckily, it all happened yesterday the day before I, like, start my vacation plan so I can, like, move on from it and whatever. But, man, what a butt of a situation. Taylor, I'm going to go ahead and kill my video because it is, you were, It is freezing on your end.

Oh, sure. It wasn't happening for me, but I'll do it. It's raining here, so maybe that's why. So, sucks to hear. Sorry about that. Was that car paid off? Yes. Oh, God.

I know. You know, it's funny. I'll, like, occasionally, like, when I'm feeling super weak and kind of foolish, when it comes to money, we'll start looking at cars. You're like, oh, man, this is such a cool car. And then I look at my car, I'm like, my car's fine. Like, I had no issues with it. like I definitely was like I would bitch about my car because like well I mean

technically my husband bought it and it was his car and then he bought a new car and I got that one because I haven't been driving for very long but um so thank you Juan for letting me have the car but um now you know I was like it doesn't have like Apple car play you know and like I did have I was going to get it like detailed and clean so I'm glad I didn't do that because it would a waste that would have been yeah an absolute waste um well good look on that on that search um the one thing I would tell you Taylor because I was like super on the EV train and like love Tesla's

and I actually had an order in for Arabian for a period of time and as I've like kind of like gotten a little bit older with and I was like man stopping every like 200 or 300 miles and having to like sit there for 30 to an hour that'll eat up a lot

if you're traveling like you'll eat up quite a bit of your day it's a little weird I mean, I'm not saying they're great. They're great. But, like, I think they're great if you're like, I have my, I have, like, my regular car. And then my car that I drive around town to go to restaurants, whatever, like, that's my EV. Like, that's one, that's a better way to do it. Like, if I had, like, my solar panels set up and my Tesla battery at my house and, you know, blah, blah, blah.

Then, yes. Right, right. So anyway. I need money to save money, you know, all those things. Make money to save money. well let's go ahead and dive right in you are going first today if I recall correctly I am let me go let me go first cool so farce today is March 30th this will come out on April 1st but I'm still going to do one more specifically for Women's History Month and also speaking of Jim remember how much Jim hated April

Fool's Day yes I hated the two so that was dumb so let's do one more Women's History Month story this one actually, Kiara, our friend who sent me this stuff about lying, she also had sent me this story. And I was like, duh, this is something I absolutely should have done. So why did I do this earlier? So thank you for reminding me. And I'm glad that I'm doing this today. Yeah, thank you. So I read a book this week that I read in a book club when I lived in New York back in 2010. Do you know the story of the black woman who died in 1951 whose cells have lived on and have been instrumental in creating vaccines? Yeah. Yes. Yes. I. If you gave me like 15 minutes to actually like tackle that part of my brain, I could probably remember her name. Well, this is a story of Henrietta Lax. Yes. Yeah. Okay. It was there.

Yep. It's there. So there are, there's a lot. What a great story. Okay. Yeah. Let's listen. This is, this one's, I'm super into this.

Let's figure this out. It's so good. And I'm so, I'm excited to hear what, you know, your questions and thoughts. A lot of it's like, sciencey that I, like, barely understand. But there's a lot in this story. There's definitely a lot of race inequality, income inequality, lack of sex education and like health education and lack of health care historically and sort of this will cover this whole, this whole story.

One thing that I do want to mention again, and I hope I say it again in the outline. If I miss it, I want to say it up front, is so the book that I read is called The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lax by Rebecca Scloot. It's really good. Definitely recommend watching it or reading it. It also was a movie. Yeah, I'm going to say it sounds like a movie. Yeah, it is a movie as well.

But one thing that Henrietta Lax's children say again and again is that her cells contributed so much to science, and we'll talk about what that means. But her children couldn't afford health insurance. You know? Wild. So that's, you know, something that is kind of hovering over this story. So the book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, is written by Rebecca Scloot, who is a white woman. She's very aware that she's a white person,

you know, inserting herself into this story. Reporters had visited Henrietta's family on and off for decades, but some of them were scammers, you know, trying to get them to, like, sue or get money from them, and we'll talk about why. In 1976, Michael Rogers, a reporter for Rolling Stone, wrote an article. He called Henrietta Helen Lane because people didn't know her real name. At that point, it would have been, like, miswritten down many, many times.

But the book is really about Rebecca gaining trust of the family, and especially Henrietta's daughter, Deborah. Oprah plays Deborah in the movie. And so it's a really like there's the story of their friendship and just kind of helping them understand what happened. And it's because it's very confusing and very complicated. So definitely recommend reading that to learn a little bit more about like the family. But let's talk about a few things. There's race and health care, Henrietta's life, and then what happened to her to herself. So I. I. I guess I'm going to start with, like, right now about, you know, in America, but I'm sure this is not just an American problem. One story that stood out to me is, do you remember when Serena Williams almost died when she had her baby? No, not really. So this is from an L article that she wrote in 2022. And underneath the headline, the first line is, quote, black women are nearly three times more likely to die after childbirth than white women. Serena Williams was almost one of them.

Here in her own words, she tells her story. So this article, you can read it in L, and I'll put the link in. So Serena Williams had some blood clots in her lungs that she knew that she had before. So she was like having her baby going through that and then she started coughing and she was coughing so badly that she like ripped her C-section scars like absolutely horrible. And she knew that there was something wrong and people they didn't listen to her. until she finally got a doctor who listened to her and checked and there was a blood clot on its way to her heart. She almost died.

Wow. And this woman is like literally one of the greatest athletes of all time, you know, like more connected to her body than like anyone to have who is going to have baby. And they didn't believe her that she had these things happening to her. And that happened in 2021. So still a huge, a huge thing. So if we go back in time, some of the thing that I think are true. crime people will remember and know is like do you remember how in like the when people were first

figuring out how a human body worked they would dig up dead bodies to dissect them yes and like that's fun what all all doctors are basically grave robbers too yeah in like a creepy eight like 1700s in london kind of way you know yeah um but yeah exactly so you had to like you'd like hire people to like rob a grave or like whatever or how like H. H. Holmes is like, remember he was like dating, quote, quote, whatever, that woman and then like her skeleton ended up in like a doctor's office. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Terrifying. We still haven't known a lot about bodies for a very, very long time. But another terrible thing that happened in the mid, the mid 1900s was, of course, the Holocaust and all of the terrible things that the Nazis did to experiment on people. The Japanese

Japanese also experimented on people. I'm sure that the U.S. did as well. It could probably find, and I have an example of that, too. But a lot of it is outlined in the Nuremberg codes, which were after World War, too. Have you heard of that? Yeah, of course. So it's basically 10 parts that are essentially regulating the way that you are allowed to experiment and, you know, work with human bodies. So it's kind of cut out some of them, but essentially they are, you need the voluntary consent of the

human. The responsibility for the consent rests upon the person conducting the experiment. So you have to be the person that asks for consent if you're going to do it. The experiment should be such as to yield fruitful results for the good of society. So it should have a good goal. It should be based on the results of animal testing to start with. And like that is something that I've heard recently in like the doctor deaths where people are, have you ever listened to those or saw it's like another podcast is also a um a Netflix show but it is about doctors who just are like liars you know who just like do these terrible things and a lot of them have these things they're like I'm sure this will work but they never tested it on animals and they lied and said that

they did you know okay can I just take a moral stance here I also don't think we should be tested on animals no this is the opposite stance the stance is that you should test on animals first before humans and my stance is you shouldn't be on animals. What are you going to test on? I don't know. Like, I mean, now with AI, they're saying that AI can run like every test possible, like simultaneously.

Like, just do that. Like, we don't need to be hurting animals. Sure. I don't know if that's true. I'm people over animals, but whatever. More of these are more of the Nuremberg Code. It should be, the experiment should avoid all this unnecessary physical and mental suffering. suffering. No experiment she conducted where there's a reason to believe that death or

disabling injury will occur unless in the experiments where the positions are the subjects. So you can do it to yourself, but you can't do it to other people. I've heard of that. I've heard doctors who inject themselves. They've found some like cures that way. Yeah, the guy who discovered that mosquitoes, um, yes. Yeah, mosquitoes do malaria and like the Spanish flu. He was like, fuck you and had a mosquito by him. And he died, but he figured it out. There is, the risk should never exceed that determined by humanitarian importance to the problem solved. So the risk shouldn't be greater than the reward.

Proper preparation should be made adequate facilities. It should be conducted by scientifically qualified persons. The human subjects should be at liberty to bring it to an end. And the scientists in charge must be prepared to stop at any stage. So if it starts to go too far, they have to stop. So basically, like, don't be a dick, get people's consent, don't do anything crazy. And that came out of the Nuremberg trials. Obviously, we know that that's not something that has, like, been 100% on for a very, very long time.

Considering, you know, about the Tuskegee experiment in the United States. So just to recap, that was from 1932 to 1972. The government gave 600 black men syphilis to test the symptoms of syphilis, even though after 1940, they had penicillus. to cure syphilis, they kept doing it. Do we know why they even try it, why they did that? I think it was, I mean, they wanted to see what would happen. Like, which is...

Didn't they know? I mean, we are... Was it still like, it's not like, it's not just that. I think it's like other things to, like, if you have syphilis to make this worse or whatever, like there would be a little bit more to it, but it was clearly a violation of the number code and bad. Sorry, one last question. Yeah, go ahead. How did lobotomies fly under the radar?

Totally. It's a great question, right? Because you would say, like, I mean, I guess you'd say like this is for their good, the greater good or for them, you know? Okay. So you can basically spin anything into like, it's just spin. You're just spinning something into like, yeah, okay, got it. 100%. 100%. Yeah. There's also like, you know, the Hippocratic oath. Like first, do you know, harm. And obviously doctors have done harm a lot, you know. Not, you know, not every doctor, but there are, you know, some standout examples. So there's, you know, the Tuskegee experiment happening in the United States around the time that we're going to talk about. There's also something that is, like, I think, a social class-related thing that I've heard about in, like, developing countries. But I think kind of applies here, too, is like a mistrust of doctors because if you, by the time you get to the doctor, you're too far gone, so you die. Right. Does that make sense?

So you have that. So then you're like, well, when the doctor kills people, you know. Right. When, like, if you could have gone there earlier, because if you have. have the insurance or you had the money or you had the means, then maybe you could have been saved. By the time you get there, it's too late. There's also, it's that, but also, like, like, governments, the U.S. in particular has leveraged medicine to, like, so, like, for example, with Osama bin Laden, you know how they did that

whole thing? What, like, they killed him? No, because they need, well, they needed to identify. they need to do like they need to get more circumstantial evidence that he was there on that compound and so what they did was they put together this like program to test kids for genetic diseases and for whatever i forgot exactly what it was but basically they were trying to do is basically bring this whole city together and village together to like do blood testing for medical purposes only for the sole reason to isolate his DNA to better understand whether he was in that city in that compound cool and crazy and so now people there are like we are why would we trust you yeah yeah totally that's crazy um so yeah so there's that too so people don't always go to the doctor when when they can or they have mistrust for for good reason you know um also i think you should go to the doctor if you haven't been in a while both both ways go um so now we are in Baltimore

the late 1800s. And there is a man named Johns Hopkins. He is a strong union supporter and seems like a pretty good guy. In 2020, there was some evidence that he may have been a slave owner, despite being a union supporter and abolitionist. But then there's evidence against that, that maybe that was like paperwork for another reason. So I don't know the answer, but that's just out there. And Johns Hopkins University and Hospital is being very open with what they're learning it as they're learning it. So, but we do know for sure is that John's hop, John's plural, that's his name. Hopkins did leave money for a hospital and a university to specifically help poor people. He wanted to help black people, people who couldn't afford care. Part of it was like an orphanage institution for young black children who needed support. He wanted people to be able to have health care regardless of money or race. So that was a big part of Johns Hopkins legacy that we still see today with his university. In the 1950s, Johns Hopkins exists. as a university in a hospital, but it's also segregated like everything else.

Are you saying Johns Hopkins? Yes. Yeah. John, like the plural Johns. Yep. Got it. Johns Hopkins. So he, oh, I know you haven't seen this, but we've all seen hairspray. Everyone else has seen hairspray.

And hairspray is about segregation in Baltimore. And that's in 1962. So there's a lot of, of, you know, race relations happening there, you know, always, but also in the 50s. And Johns Hopkins is where you go when you are really sick. So it is the only hospital that will do these advanced tests on black people in the area. And your primary care doctor will refer you to Johns Hopkins. And by the time you get there, you're very sick. Makes sense?

Yeah. Cool. Let's keep that in mind. And let's talk about Henrietta. Henrietta Lax was born Loretta Pleasant. That was her birth name on August 1st, 1920. in Roanoke, Virginia. Her family lived in former slave quarters that were owned by her white great-grandfather.

So the family right now even has like a white laxes and black laxes side that, you know, they're genetically related from some point, but she had a white great-grandfather. Her mom died when Henrietta was young. Her mom was having her, you know, her 10th kid, like on the floor of the house, like, you know, very, very poor. And her mom passed away. So Henrietta and her siblings moved to Clover, Virginia, and she lived there with her cousins. One of the cousins that she shared a room with

was a cousin named David, but they called him Day. And he was a couple years older than her, and they end up getting married and having kids. So Henrietta marries her cousin day. And that's something that we also see over and over again. And I just happen to see a good daily mail article. And again, like, I know that's daily mail silly, but talking about people who find out via like 23 Me that they've like dated. their brother because of like small towns where people have like slept around and not told anybody or like those cases where I think we talked about this where like the doctor like used his sperm and all of the things no god yeah you know um like those are horrible um I also so in that article in Daily Mail they had the US laws about marrying your cousin so many states like in California it's legal you can and other states there's some like rules around it like if you can't have kids then like sure if you're old and you want to marry your cousin, that's fine, things like that. You can't do first cousins, though, can you?

Yeah. Wow. I'm not asking for any particular reason. I'm just kidding. No, no, no, no. It just seems like first cousins is like kind of a, you should draw the line in the sand somewhere. And it's funny because, like, they frown upon it in some cases,

then others they don't. Like, I feel like one of like the further back historical cases, first cousins got married and people were like, ew, but then like other times it's fine, you know? So it just depends. Obviously, like, we get Hopsburgs who, like, can barely close their mouths because of all they're wearing. Henrietta and Day's children will end up with a history of really poor hearing, high blood pressure and asthma and diabetes.

So they do have a lot of health problems. Some of it could be, you know, because their parents were cousins. Henrietta had her first child when she was 14, and she ended up having five children in total. Her child, Elsie, had epilepsy and cerebral palsy. Henrietta took care of her until she couldn't anymore and Elsie was sent to a place called the Hospital for the Negro insane, which is as terrible as it sounds. In the book that in the immortal life of Henrietta lax, the author and Deborah Henrietta's daughter go there. It's a different institution now and they find a record with a photo in it and in the photo there's like a white woman's hand like holding Elsie's head toward the camera and Elsie is like, very clearly not okay you know like her hair's a mess her eyes are bulging out she's like screaming

it's i haven't seen it but they describe it as being absolutely horrific um elsie will die when she's like 15 in that institution but while she was home henrietta like you know took really really good care of her and she took really good care of her family her friends um you know people who remember her she was always like kept her self really well dressed her house was really nice she always had her nails painted you know she was just doing her best to like live her life It's right. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Henrietta and Day got married when she was 21 and he was 25, and they moved to Baltimore.

After Pearl Harbor, steel became something that obviously the United States really needed, so there were a lot of steel meals in Baltimore, and they moved up there. There's also some things that are happening. Day is sleeping around, and as we see this again and again, she's going to get some STDs. Like most of history, people have STDs. And as I'll say or said before, this is before penicillin and before we're able to, like, to cure those things. So just keep that in mind. In, she ends up having more children.

She has David, Deborah, a son named Zachariah. His name was Joseph. He converted to Islam later in life, but his name is Zachariah now. And in 1950, Henrietta is 30 years old when she tells her family that she feels a knot in her womb. that's how she describes it. There's something going on. There's a knot in there. And it turns out if she's pregnant, it was Zachariah.

So people are like, oh, that was it. It was a baby. You know, like that's what you were feeling. But after she has him, she still feels it. She's like, there's still something wrong. There's still something there. I know there's a knot in there. So her doctor refers to John's Hopkins.

And they feel the lump on her cervix. There's definitely a lump there's like the size of a marble. So they do a... If it's that big, I mean, and there's also, I have stories people who have, like, a tumor that's like the size of a golf ball and they never feel it, you know? Yeah. But she felt it. She knew that it was there. It was like the front of her cervix.

So she could like, she could feel it like with her hand, you know? So like, she knew that it was there. So they took a biopsy of it. And then they found out that it was cervical cancer. It was, there were two types of cervical cancer. And she was misdiagnosed with like. the wrong one, but it doesn't really matter because it would have treated it the same at that time anyway. Right. So that's that's right. So she starts treatment and this is where we're talking

about radium treatment again. So what they do is they literally put like a tube of radium inside her vagina and they put sheets of lead around it to try to save the rest of her body and just like keep it in there for a while and hope for the best. Which is crazy. hopefully they advanced since then yeah and so this is also um something for women that i learned in this that i was like are you freaking kidding me so have you ever heard i don't know i'm laughing have you know what a pap smear is uh i know what those words are but i don't know what it is so essentially they put like a a plastic tube inside of your vagina and then they take like a big cutip and like swirl it around and then take it out and just like make sure that everything is okay

hanging there. That was invented by in the 1920s by the Greek physician Georgios Hapa Nikolao, whatever, it's very Greek. But it's named after him. His last name is Pap, which I thought was hilarious. I just had no idea that it was a dude named Pap. So, but that was

like part of the thing as well. But during this time when I take the biopsy to see what exactly is going on and while they're giving her the radium, they give her cancer cells to a doctor named George Otto guy. I spelled G-E-Y. He is a researcher at Johns Hopkins, and Henrietta didn't know that they were going to be given away. Not that they would have ever told her, and not that they really tell anyone.

Like, it's something that is complicated to a huge degree, like, where does your blood go after it's drawn? They still have it somewhere, probably, you know? I mean, it wasn't being given away. It was going off for testing. Right, right, right. But then, like, but then, you know, something happens and he's going to, it's going to grow. But like, after the testing is done, then, like, who owns the rights to whatever's left? So there's been a lot of, like, back and forth.

And now, like, there was no, like, HIPAA at this point where, like, she had any, you know, privacy rights with, with her cells. And she wouldn't have known and she wouldn't have cared, you know, like, I don't think that it would have been a thing that would have, like, crossed her mind to be, like, I don't know what's going to happen to myself. There are official U.S. guides, and I have a link to the official government website on it now, but one part of it says, quote, when in the course of an intervention, any part of the human body is removed, it may be stored and used for a purpose other than that for which it was removed, only if it's done in conformity with appropriate information and consent. So if they like biopsy something for you and you sign a paper that says you can use these cells for something else in the future, then they can do whatever they want with it. I mean, until you started talking, like, until you brought this up, like, exactly maybe 15 seconds ago, the question never occurred in my mind of like, what happens to myself? Exactly. I've never thought about it. Yeah. Henry, I wouldn't have thought about it.

I've never thought about it. Like, the one thing that I remember very specifically signing away is the um, the umbilical cord blood when my kids were born. Because there's, like, some research that umbilical cord blood can help other babies. so some people if you're like rich you'll save your blood you'll put it in like a blood bank so the biblical court will be saved just in case your baby needs it but we donated ours i don't know if ended up getting thrown away or whatever but like we signed papers that like if for some reason the vocal cord blood when i had any of my babies could help another baby i was like take it you know would it help what would they do with it i have no idea it's like something i have no idea

but that that's the only time i remember signing something being like you can specifically use this for whatever you want because I was like if this could help another baby great yeah but even even with that tell you you probably wouldn't even known if they didn't tell you to sign this you would have been like wait what about that blood in the bill of the court I never would have known I certainly wouldn't have thought about it because I was in the middle of having a baby right you're like I'm busy I don't care um so the there's some stories of people who have sued after they found out that their cells were being used commercially um and people are making a lot of money from them but for the most part like the laws like you know once you give something away it's no longer part of your body

um so the radium didn't work on on henrietta's uh tumor in her cervix so she went back for radiation treatments where they would like point radiation towards her so what they did is on her on her belly like where her cervix is they tattooed two little dots they always did it in the same place and they would put like lead on the rest of her body and they would just aim radiation towards those spots and it would like burn her skin you know and like left her the skin on her belly on her um like black burned black because of like the radiation treatment isn't that crazy yeah so really terrible um just absolutely awful um her family and friends were you know she had a newborn baby her family and friends would come visit her she ended up ending up like she would go

and do these treatments and then she'd like walk to her cousin's house and like stay there there until she couldn't do it anymore until she was like physically unable to do it. Her family would like try to donate blood to help her like whatever because she was just like so sick. They would sit with her in the hospital. She would like rise in pain in the hospital or sisters would like have to hold her down. She was tied to the bed because she would go into these like fits of pain. She's just in so much pain.

She had so many tumors in her body that ultimately her cause of death was blood poisoning because she could no longer. Her kidneys couldn't work because they were covered in tumors. And she couldn't pee because her urethar was covered. Yeah, like everything's covered in tumors. Do you know how long from when they admitted her for this treatment until that cause of, until she died? Yes. She went into the hospital at the beginning, or I think the end of January, 1951, and she died on August 8th, 1951.

Oh, wow. That was pretty quick. Yeah, like seven months. and she was 31 years old when she died. She was super young. Day, her husband gave permission for an autopsy. When they did the autopsy,

they said it looked like there were strings of pearls in her body. There were so many tumors. So crazy. It just like, it was just absolutely everywhere over her whole entire body. Later, we will learn that the cancer

that she got came from HPV, which is something that we know about now, and now you can get a vaccine against HPV that can help. fight cervical cancer. So that's like directly because of Henry Vida that we're able to do that. And we'll talk about what that means in a second. So at her funeral, she was buried in an unmarked grave in Clover, Virginia.

Her family said that at the surface there was a gust of wind that was so bad at knocked down houses. You know, and they were like, that was her like saying goodbye, like rattling things. Meanwhile, her, you know, children are going to kind of go around live with family. they're going to have pretty rough lives, unfortunately. A lot of them, some of them will be in prison. They will just kind of be trying to make it work. But also something that I forgot to write down, but her son, Zachariah, who he converted to Islam in prison.

But he was so abused by his stepmom that he just became a really violent person. And it's very, very sad. Like, the poor kids, their life was sad after their mother died. But meanwhile, separate from the Lax family, Dr. Guy and his wife have a lab. They are patenting ways to keep cells. So you need to be able to test things on cells to see how cells work, how they grow, kind of figure all this stuff out. But cells don't grow out of the body.

You can have a cell in like a vial or in like a dish with like something called cell culture. And this is, you know, I'm just very lightly talking about this. but so it can like essentially feed and keep the cells alive, but eventually they will die. But Henrietta's did not die. They doubled and they doubled and they doubled. And you kept feeding them cell culture, they would grow to the size of any container that they had. And this hadn't happened before. They had never had a cell that lasted longer than like 24 hours out of the body and they keep, keep growing.

And they named the cell, the hela cell. and that's just like the first two letters of her first name and the first two letters of her last name as like an organizing system. So they put them in a tube, wrote HeLa, H-E-L-A on them, and then the next day came back and they were doubled. And then they were doubled. And then they were doubled. And they just kept growing. So these were cancer cells, right? That's the biopsy. Yes. They're cancer cells. Okay. They did have some regular cells, but those died. But the cancer cells are the ones that are continuing to grow.

so I mean like this time it this had never happened before in science history I have like a little bit of the reason why I don't 100% understand it I'd love for someone to you know I could read the book a third time and try to figure it out but essentially they were able to isolate one cell and that cell just kept growing dividing and dividing and dividing they have high telemaras which is something that helps them divide indefinitely and they're missing a two tumor suppressor gene. These will also help with, like, mapping the human genome and figuring out who, who we, like, all of that stuff later, but they're missing something that suppresses tumors that most regular cells have and even cancer cells have. So that, for me, that tracks with how fast it spread in Henrietta that her cancer cells weren't even regulating themselves at all. They were just growing and growing, you know?

Yeah. So Dr. Guy started to give them away because he was like, we can do things with these. like we can do tests on them and we can see what you know what different things happen to to human cells so he would kind of give them to people close by and then later he would test their limits he would like you know go to american airlines and ask the pilot to like hold it in their in their pocket on their shirt and take them across the country and see if they survived and they did they would send them in the mail and like sealed packages to see what would happen and they would survive train rides and flights so he could send them everywhere he would send them for free he would send them to anyone who wanted them to get a vial of that of HILASLs. Today, if you go to the American Type Culture Collection at ATCC.com, I can't tell how many cells it is, but you can get like one packet of HILA cells for $550, and they'll be sent to you frozen. You can buy them right now? Can I have something that's going to make me sound kind of big, right? Yeah. Why is this amazing? I'm going to tell you later. I'm getting there. Okay. Okay. Okay.

So when you get, we order them from the ATCC.com. It literally says they're from a 31 year old black female with cervical cancer. So they're all, they're Henrietta cells. Today there are so, and you know how big a cell is? It's like, unbelievably small. Yeah, sunny. There are so many hela cells. They're estimated if you put them all together, they would weigh 50 tons of just cells.

Because they've nonstop reproduced since 1951. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So here's what you can do and why it's important. You can test everything on these human cells. They have sent them to space. They have put them underwater.

They've submitted them to radiation. Every disease you can possibly think of, the heat, the cold, everything. And so because of that, they can test things on them, but they can't test any other way. I don't, like, 100% understand the science behind all of that. But because of these cells, they were able to create vaccines

and create things that can help, you know, understand cancer and understand things and say like, okay, well, how will humans, you know, survive in space eventually and bring ourselves up there and just kind of see what happens. You can do any test possible on these cells because they are always the same and they never stop growing. But why can you do that with a normal cell? Because they die.

On their own. Oh, because then you have to do it on a real human being because you need their cells to stay alive to get it got it exactly exactly so you can have this like um what's it called one it's like the like the one like the first test like you can have that and then do my test to it and like compare it to the original you know the control and yeah the control yeah exactly and there is a little bit of stuff in like later in in the book that is like are these cells even human anymore are they even her anymore you know what i mean like if you have this cell and you like continue to divide it for ever and ever like the cell that you have now is like from

you know the 500 millionth division of a cell like what is it anymore you know so there's a lot of like it's because it is like a I don't know a weird thing that happened so by right away so she did in 1951 by 1953 Joseph Salk is using it for his polio vaccine so he uses the he la cells and that helps him create the vaccine for polio he needs as many cells as possible to do his experiments and his tests and who other doctors to kind of do similar things. So he needed a factory, and they built a Gila cell producing factory at Tuskegee University. So the same place that was doing the Tuskegee experiments, they were, they had a lab run by the black people who went to the university

mailing it out all over the world. which is pretty incredible by like two years later um they were you know some things that also happened like one guy injected the cells directly into people with and without cancer to see what would happen um and he did that on prisoners who volunteered for it so what did they learn um i think that like if you had if you didn't have cancer it would the cancer cells would um they would die inside of you but if you did they would grow so it was like a thing to try to figure out like what would happen um they used it for a gene mapping wait if you were to inject yourself with her cell would it would just die so it could only really be immortal if it was outside your body

yes or if it like it's like another cancer cell yeah because your body's gonna fight cancer cells got it got it yeah right okay i'm probably totally wrong all the doctors who listen and i'll be like what the hell um but they were they did like some things in the 70s that were like sensational they merged them with animal cells to see what would happen and like so that of course like the tallows would be like there's going to be a half human half mouse you know and that wasn't what they were doing they were doing other things that I don't understand but there's that um they basically been um experimented with in in a thousand different ways they're so strong they fly through the air and contaminate other experiments so you have to like really be careful with their

cells because they can go into another experiment and change the results to that one. So ever since she, ever since she died, even before she died, Dr. Gay, Guy was using her cells and they've just been, you know, everywhere. In the meantime, her family has no idea this is happening. So they start getting calls in the 70s to get like their blood drawn. And Deborah, her daughter thinks that it's a cancer test. She doesn't know. And she doesn't know. And she's, she's about the same age that her mom was when her mom passed away. So she's, like, thinking that she's going to also get this, you know, she's like in her, in her early 30s.

But they don't tell them anything. The doctors just kind of take their blood and don't tell them anything. They are, they hear rumors like there are clones of Henrietta walking around. They, you know, like, do the cells feel anything? Does she know what's happening? Are she in pain? You know, she's going everywhere. Like, how much of her exists?

So much of it is so hard to understand that they just like, no one helped them, no one told them anything. They were just like doing this and sometimes asking for their DNA in their blood. They also had her name wrong in the news. They called her Helen Lane, but it's not. It's Henry and relax. And so a lot of the book is about, you know, letting the family know what is happening, showing them the cells, teaching them about the science. Deborah passed away during the writing of the book. but she had, you know, tried to, really tried to learn.

She tried to go to school for science and figure out what was happening to her mom because it's something that is hard to wrap your brain around now, always, you know, and she was like, I never met my mother, really. She died when she was a little girl, and so she wanted to, like, figure out what was happening. The Lack Stanley medical records were published without their consent. One dude wrote a book about the Gila cells and never mentioned the family or Henrietta even once. you know, that that just like wasn't a part of something that crossed their minds. Well, yeah, but it sounds like that's like kind of what's supposed to actually happen.

I was looking up while you were talking, the immortal cells. And they found many, many others after that. And none of them identify where they come from. Like once I'm reading right now says that it came from peripheral blood of a 14-year-old with leukemia. Another one came from a 58-year-old Caucasian male with. some sort of tumor in his lung. Right. So in this case, like, you know, in 2013,

Henry Edda's DNA sequence was published. And that's very specifically the DNA sequence of her family, you know, and we know who she is and we know who they are. So, and like I said in the beginning, you know, all of this stuff that like we are really lucky to have, like the polio vaccine, you know, and all those research that we can do with these cells and her children, can't afford health insurance, you know, like all the stuff that has been created because of

this. And then in, in, so that, I think that was like one of the big ones. They knew who she was and they talked about her in the press and they would bother her family and they would be trying to like, but they wouldn't explain to them what was happening. And then in 2013, so in 2013, her DNA sequence was published. Research kept coming out like on that DNA sequence. And, and, her estate, her family sued Thermo Fisher in 2021, and they settled out of court on July 30th, 2023 for an undisclosed amount. So hopefully they got something, you know, from, and I don't think it's even about the cells at this point.

It's about like their whole life they've been like hounded by the press. They've been hounded by people wanting their DNA in their cells to try to like figure all these things. They're using them. They're not like harming them with the experiments, but they are. They're using them. Yeah. They're using them.

I mean, that's the part of, like, when you're talking about this, I was like, I was like, you shed skin cells all the time. Do you really give a shit? Like, does anybody ever care that you wash your hair and like a piece of hair comes out? And it's like, no, it's just, it is what, like, the cells themselves don't seem like the reason for the compensation so much as, you know, the actual labor of the family to help facilitate completely. completing the picture of what's going on. That's the part where I'm like, yeah, of course you should do something for that. Yeah, exactly, exactly. So, you know, since Henriana's death, she's been put in the National Women's Hall of Fame.

There's countless labs and statues and plaques and things named after her. And her cells will most likely live forever in some sort of, you know, frozen, unfrozen seat where they grow or not grow or in space or in the bottom of the ocean like they're kind of everywhere which is what makes them special as they continue to grow we continue to use them but um we should also talk about the person they came from makes sense there's yeah there's like nine or so i can tell that they have found um but only it looks like four or five are human one's like a mouse one's like a pops one's a monkey um

yeah weird like this is why I'm not a scientist like exactly I'm still like why but also like I don't I don't get I get it like okay it's just it's like when you try and explain why how airplanes fly and it's like somebody has this figured out like I don't know

how much more I need to sort of you look at this anymore exactly I'm the person who's in charge of this but we know that this like is happening And it's just, it's a wild, a wild story and crazy that they, I mean, imagine like the day in the lab being like, oh my gosh, these are not dying, like they're continuing to grow. Like, what can we do with this? Oh, and also, so also Dr. Guy, when he died, he, he had cancer and he wanted to be experimented on. And he asked his coworkers to, like, pull out his tumor and, like, biopsy and see if it was immortal, see if that would help. But they didn't, they opened him up and they didn't. They opened him up and they didn't. want to do it because I thought that it would, they didn't want to risk it. So they,

um, so he had him back up and he was pissed when he woke up and found out that they hadn't done the thing that he asked them to do. And, um, he ended up going around to different hospitals and being like, do every experiment possible on me while I'm still alive. Like,

you have a minute you've wanted to test on a human. I'm here. And he, he got a bunch of things done to him before, um, before he passed away of cancer as well, which is brave and nice. Yeah.

Yeah. He did, um, he did what, what he would have done to somebody else probably. Yeah, totally. But he did it.

Part of the Nuremberg code is like, if you say it's, if you're a doctor and you say it's okay, then go ahead. Go nuts. Yeah. Interesting. I learned a lot.

This was really educational. I love when our, when our episodes like segue into like just like generally interesting things around like, like the science aspect of it and you like researched it well enough to where, I'm, like, asking questions, and you get it and we're able to kind of articulate. Like, I don't, I don't, again, like, all this stuff, like, I have no idea. Yeah, totally. We're clearly not scientists, but this is a story that we should know in some way, shape, or form, you know?

I don't think it's that clear that we're not scientists. I think you're not saying this. I think some people think that if they were to listen to us talking, like, he's going to play scientists. You know what I wish? I wish you would, that we could turn on our cameras right now, and I was wearing, like, a lap coat and, like, goggles. Like, when we were talking about my favorite part in airplane is when, the one lady's like, I think the man next to me at the doctor and Lizzie Nilsen is sleeping

with a stethoscope on. You turn it on and like I'm wearing like a monocle and a top hat you're like, that's not what a scientist looks like for us. I have goggled on and I'm like you're like Taylor those are the wrong kind of goggles. I have like a scoop of goggle on. Oh man.

Fun times. That was awesome. Thanks for sharing that, Taylor. What an awesome like episode to to do right before we do a little hiatus. Yeah. Cool.

Lots learned. But yeah, I guess is there anything that you want to make announced wise? No, if you, we have a whole bunch of new Instagram followers because I did a reel and I paid for it to be out there. And I get the Christie. So if you have listened recently and or I got the Christie episode had a lot of a lot of downloads. So we really appreciate everybody who might be new. Thank you for, thank you for listening. And if you have any ideas, send us an email,

Doomedepilpod at gmail.com, and we're at Doom to Fail on all socials. And also, if you know what kind of car I should get, let me know. Yes, right in with your sessions on. We have to put some guardrails around this, Taylor. Okay, it has to be a car you own or have owned, and you need to have owned it for three years, minimum. My first thought was like, should I get a cyber truck?

like obviously not but like i was like let's get weird with it could you imagine i see those things everywhere now austin i've never seen one they are no matter how many times i've seen it every time i see i'm like it looks like a refrigerator driving on the street like it looks so strange that's so funny i have to convince it to see one because i definitely will never see one here i do see a fair amount of teslas but i've not seen as ever truck and that be hilarious yeah i'm thinking Subaru so give me a call oh i love Subaru superos super's are great Subaru Subaru's like I can really get behind this because that's a Blair's thing too because Blair says she also sees Subaru is all over Austin and she really wants one yeah so the okay so

here's one thing especially for you all wheel drive get a car that has all will drive but mostly cars that have all wheel drive are also super expensive Subaru is like the only company that's figured out how to do it like consistently on the cheap or cheap is and so all their cars have all wheel drive which is great like I had an all wheel drive car when the freeze hit Austin I was so thankful. Well, everybody else is just spinning in the middle of those streets. I was actually able to move and go places. Yes, that'd be cool.

Maybe I kind of want maybe a green one. I don't know. I feel like, that's like, could I get a green car? Can I do whatever I want right now? You're like, yeah, you can do whatever you want right now. Are we adults? I've never bought a car before. Like, I didn't get my license until six years ago.

Like I said, my husband bought her a car. Then he bought himself a new car. So I've just been like driving Juan's cars very gratefully. But now I'm like, what if I got a car just? for me. What could that even be like? And then I'm like, I let's look at green cars. I like, bomb these cool cars, but they were like not real. They're like models of cars. I'm like, okay, so did it calm down and get like a normal car. If you, dear listener, drive in green Subaru, please write for us and tell us if the color has impacted your life positively or negatively.

Oh, good question. There we go. Sweet. Well, we'll go ahead and wrap this up. Thank you, Taylor. We'll go ahead and cut this out. Thank you.