Honestly, the idea of cancer cells getting rebellious against the established order because of some nostalgia of their single-celled ancestors really is interesting.
It's a very seducing idea, but it's also a very partial one. From the perspective of aging multicellular organism, it's also a natural clock - the body self-destructing itself as it ages to leave more room for subsequent generations. And there's also the issue that cancer cells aren't the only cells in our bodies to show a degree of individuality. Not all our cells work in perfect cooperation... and that's why there's so many auto-immune diseases. The idea that cancer is an atavism of some sort makes sense intuitively, but the more you look at it, the more it just looks like a dysfunction.
Shoutout to the pathology labs around the world! They're the department that carries out the staining & diagnosis of biopsies and bodily fluids. Pathologists (MDs who have specialised in laboratory medicine) then inspect the slides, order additional tests, and diagnose based on the results. The pathology department often gets overlooked by the general public as they tend to work in the background rather than directly with the patients. This unfortunately also means that a lot of medical laboratories face substantial shortages in personel! So they can use all the love & attention we can give them.
There are way to many MLTs getting churned out. The job market anywhere near an accrediting program is heavily flooded and the opposite is true for the Histo community due in part to the fact that at surface level it isn't apparent just how integral a pathology lab is in the grand diagnosis/treatment system. We don't work for patients. We work for the doctor that performed your surgery. Over the years they have also incrementally made accreditation more difficult as time goes on. Its become discouraging to young people. The average age of an employee in an IHC or histolab is upper 50's maybe even 60 now. The Histo community is understaffed as a whole but its manageable. In another 10-15 years though the bulk of us will be retiring. The time to train and educate a new generation is here now but no one wants to address it publicly. It's like driving a car and waiting until it dies on the side of the road before you get more gas. It's too late at that point. Our low fuel light is on but no one seems to be concerned.
@@chokobo0047 to hopefully ease your concern, I took years after high school finding a career, and I fell in love with pathology and Im dead set on the path and steps to get there. A lot of people my age are actually pretty interested in the background stuff that goes on anywhere really, so I wouldnt stress too much about not having another influx of pathologists or the like
It doesn't help that the work of an MLT and MLS is poorly compensated in my opinion with a lot of schooling, training and stress. Many of my peers and myself have left the industry due to literally not being able to afford living in our city while working 10 hour shifts, though histology is generally better compensated than general lab scientist or core lab. @@chokobo0047
As a cancer biologist who works on trying to understand how cancer cells invade and metastasize, I really do appreciate this video. Cancer cells are literally like its own organism, they move away to find more food and establish new home (yeah, that's essentially what metastases are!). I'm so glad Hank is doing better. But this video also shows how cancer research is so important. And the people who work in histology are also the unsung heroes for doing all the staining in the background just so the pathologist can look and diagnose. All very important work that needs to be recognised for!
Thank you for the kind words! I worked for a number of years as an HT then as an HTL, including at a cancer research lab, and we were always the invisible people. I look at these stains and say, yeah, I've done that. Histology itself is another fascinating science and sometimes, it is also an art form.
Hello there ! Just wanted to know what was your study path to become a cancer biologist. Im a pharmacy school student and im very interested in such domain but i dont know if its possible to pursue it after pharmacy school. Thank you and have a great day / night :)
@@peaceofmind5635 I did 3y BSc in Biochem, had done extensive study on cell biology, advanced cell biology, and cancer biology. Then did 4 y PhD in Cancer biology. Hope it helps.
I work in a pathology department for the last 4 years. I'm only the assistant admin but I love my job and the things I get to see. The pathologist i work with are so intelligent and some of the hardest working people I've ever worked with in my 25 years working experience. All though they don't see the patients they still care about those patients the same as if they did. It is a very rewarding job.
Man I remember when I logged into youtube one morning, and there was a new channel "Journey to the Microcosmos", where Hank was doing ASMR descriptions of tiny things and talking about how excited they were to have a fancy microscope. I remember when they upgraded, I remember so many things. 20k, 50k, 100k, 250k, and soon 1m. I LOVE this 'lab science' channel! It shows things that are in the world all around us, but that most of us would never see or know about. Here's hoping for many, MANY more years of Hank Green narrations!
I started following it when it was new, too. They were advertising it on the various scishows, if I remember right. It is very cool to see how it's grown over the years, and I'm glad they're getting the attention they deserve. Hank seems like a pretty cool dude (tm), and his team seem lovely, as well.
I worked for Mayo Clinic's Immunohistochemistry department as a diagnostic technologist, and this explanation was spot-on! I also worked in Fluorescent In-Situ Hybridization there, along with Next-Gen Sequencing. Now I'm with the University of Washington in Hematopathology, rediagnosing and combining all three kinds of techniques to diagnose cancers just like yours. Love the shout out to us medical lab scientists; many people don't realize our job exists, and we are highly specialized staff working with physicians to come to diagnoses like yours. Keep doing your thing; I've loved all your channels since high school and keep inspiring others to learn to do cool science!!!
Y'all are true heroes, just sayin. Everyone in the medical department has an important job, even the cooks! I always do my best to treat medical staff with respect and patience (unless they give me reason not to. Long story.)
As a medical laboratory science graduate😂 I never had the chance to do.anything in lab after graduating from it💩 Im too depressed to even take my board exam.
Or the fact that our bodies come in contact with many kinds of germs every day, the good ones and the bad ones. But our immune system protects the body, it works 24/7 and prevents further inflammation
No different than missing getting hit by a drunk driver because you stopped for 20 seconds to tie your shoes 3 blocks away. Life is random. We lull ourselves into thinking we're fully in control of everything, but you could just as easily wake up tomorrow morning and learn you have brain cancer. You just have to accept the possibility that something COULD happen at any moment to destroy you, or your life, or your livelihood, or your home, or your family/a family member. Life is random. But the fact that we have no control over these things doesn't have to be scary.
@@VoidHaloit is absolutely not true that we have no control at all over whether we get cancer, even if we’ll never have complete control. Who told you cancer is completely random?
Quick rectification. PAX5 is a transcription factor, so it is not expressed on the surface of cells. BCL2 is a protein that regulates cell death (apoptosis), it is also not on the surface but inside the cell, in the cytoplasm. Finally, cyclin D1 is involved in the cell cycle and it is not expressed on the surface. CD15, CD30 and CD20 are expressed on the surface of the cells. You can still see the other proteins because before labelling them with amtibodies we permeabilize and fix the cell membrane.
Almost a year ago, I also operated on my first cancer. This one was on the skin and harmless, but still cancer. The operation was short and successful. Who knows what else awaits me at the end of my journey :)
@@coronalight77 The doctors operated on me, I didn't do it myself :) Basal-cell carcinoma - that "disease" (better - the state of the organism) is in question @user-fe1nr3ws1z The doctors said that everything was removed (on the surface of the skin it is easy to see) , but I will definitely check, thanks.
@@coronalight77assuming this was something like a stage 1 skin cancer and a bit of medical knowledge, it's not actually out of the realm of possibility, especially considering I basically did this myself with a DIY skin tag removal. (Don't remove your own skin tags, folks. It hurts like you wouldn't believe and left me a nasty wound that took forever to heal.)
One thing that annoys me about modern people is that plenty of them think that cancer as a whole is a recent thing. “Cancer is because of processed food and not living clean” they say. When in fact cancer has been a part of life since the jump. They always either double down or open up when I tell them that we found osteosarcoma on fossils million upon millions of years old. Cancer been here forever and it’s not really going anywhere for the next couple of generations maybe. You could live the cleanest most straight edge life in existence and still get got like that.
Of course cancer has been around forever. Yet we know it’s mushroomed both in people and pets, and there’s loads of science showing how environmental factors, very much including diet, contribute. Ignore at your peril.
@@i.ehrenfest349 yes we have a lot of factors that go into increasing chances of cancer but those factors pending the person won’t do anything either. I wouldn’t exactly say cases are mushrooming either rather we’ve gotten so good at catching these things early and people screen more often that we’re catching more diagnoses what would’ve remained hidden for some time, and a great indicator for cancer seems to also be genetics. You have ww2 vets that drank and smoked every day and stay cancer free until a natural death of old age and triathletes that never poisoned their bodies ever and they catch lung cancer at 37 and die soon thereafter. Life’s not fair
@@i.ehrenfest349 You don't have to play the Smart ass dude, everyone is aware there are risk factors due to lifestyle and habits, the comment is aimed at people who victim-shame on cáncer patients almost blaming them for having it, whether they actually had a healthy life or not. You are not discovering fire here dude, stop and move on.
This reminded me of a former colleague. She taught biology. Every time she, her family, or friends had a procedure, she asked for samples or x-ray photos to use in her lessons. She had quite a collection. I donated skin from when I had a particularly bad case of eczema. Some colleagues thought that she was a ghoul! Thank you, Hank, for being so open about your cancer. Every person like you brings it into the open instead of it being a topic of whispers and embarrassment. Congratulations on your recovery.
Five years in remission from colon cancer. I learned so much about life and love from my own journey. Wishing you many years of health and well being, Hank.
I'm always amazed by JTtM's capacity to teach us something new. Thank you, and thank you so much to Hank for putting these pieces of yourself under the microscope so we can all learn something new.
I am a principal scientist at a large pharma company where I develop novel IHC biomarker assays to help predict if an individual will benefit from our upcoming oncology drugs. Hank, you listing out the diagnostic markers at 3:30 gave me a big smile. A lot of work goes into the R&D for these tools, and its very rewarding hearing a recovering individual now in remission read out their own IHC pathology description.
My sister is one of many of those lab experts. In her case, she's a pathologist assistant. She receives, preps, grosses and describes allllllll the specimens. The people in that lab are very good at the parts they do to make those diagnoses accurate and fast. I am proud of her! 🎉
Thanks for taking us on this particularly personal journey, Hank. So grateful you made it through it. I had heard of the notion that cancer is like your cells reverting back to unicellular life but am glad to now know that's called the atavistic model of cancer. As a bonus I can add atavism, a tendency to revert to something ancient or ancestral, to my vocabulary.
As someone who works in a pathology lab I was ready to give my explanations and corrections to Hank but then saw the comments already did that for me. Very few people understand what goes on in my workplace so I’m glad to see people who understand
Hank, you are an amazing and lovely individual with a beautiful, inspirational and accessible voice. You're clearly genius levels of intelligent. I REALLY hope you will be okay! You truly deserve a stress-free life where you get to do what you love and learn in peace without being attacked by your own lymphocytes!
The Green brothers are all powerful. Hank Green dropping a journey through his own cancer the same day John Green drops his Crash Course lecture on Tuberculosis was almost too much for me.
My cancer let me know... tumor was eating a hole in my right kidney... I started peeing lots of Blood and "clots". A cat scan found the exact spot. Now with my right kidney removed and my cancer not being an aggressive type.. I should be fine...
“They were a single called organism whose most recent ancestors was me, but they were not me.” Oof. Now that’s something to give people existential crises.
It is if you define "you" and build your identity around your body, while not questioning what even are "you" in the first place, I think that existential crisis is healthy as to reflect upon what we are, be more existentially secure and truthful, and to solve such crisis is to rejuvenate our "meaning" on our own life, a recharge, a refresh of the soul? lol
Excellent episode from a spectacular channel! (So glad your treatment was a success, Hank! The world is a markedly better place with you, and James, and the rest of the team- in it!!)
Hank, if you've never seen the anime Cell's at Work, you should watch the episode about cancer, it's a really interesting take. Cancer is a destructive villain, but it's framed as almost sympathetic, not having asked to exist the way that it does, but not having any other choice.
Hank Green's voice: Quiet mode. It didn't sound like him the way I expected it to at first, but then after the intro it started to sound like him. Glad you're in remission, Hank! Keep trucking on.
Not only am i a Hank green fan but also a pathologist. It's so cool to see one of my favourite creators step into my world, which is often overlooked. I never thought i would see a tray of slides on a TH-cam video. Stay well Hank
Thank you for another fabulous and thought-provoking clip. I look forward to sharing this with my students! It is wonderful that you have recovered and can continue to savor this remarkable thing that is life!
Recent graduate from medical laboratory science here and I’d like to say how great it is for this channel to talk about this topic. I worked as an intern in our laboratory’s histopath section and I enjoyed every single minute of it. From cutting sections of tissues to staining them and seeing our pathologist do their work using the tissues we processed really is fulfilling knowing that every slide could mean the difference in a patients’ life. Though, i get sad when I learn the results were positive for the disease suspected, more often than not already too late to treat. I can’t thank hank enough for bringing topics like cancer to the public from spreading awareness and sharing progresses in diagnostics and treatment to even sharing his own story and battles with his own cancer. I hope their content reaches to all especially to those who need it so that we can prevent and treat (especially if diagnosed early) diseases like cancer and less of us from the medical community have to see the unfortunate consequences of being too late to do anything or have to deal with cancer at all.
The 'experts' are called Pathologists. We are medical doctors who specialize in laboratory science. It is a medical subspecialty with board exams and requires years of training.
Hank, I've been wanting to say this to you for a long time- you are such a valuable part of humanity and I'm so glad you beat your cancers ass. The world needs you and those like you now more than ever and I, personally, feel a great sense of relief just knowing that you're out there making intelligent videos for the world to watch and learn from. Thank you so much for all you do. ❤
It is unfortunate that you had to go through this, but, the way you've turned it around and used it to educate us about cancer is inspiring. Well done, Hank, and thank you for being open about it and turning this horrible illness into a way to educate others.
There is a certain nobility in using your own misfortune to educate others about cancer on the cellular level. Thank you, Hank Green, for this insightful episode!
Thank you for showing us your Hodgkin/Hodgkin's/John Hodgman Lymphoma cells. This is really interesting with the extra dimension of it being you talking about the microcosmos of ... you. And that you're okay now, thankfully.
Dear Hank. When you first made your reappearance, I almost cried. I have been watching you and John way more than any actors/actresses in the past decade. Thank you for coming back.
Med student here! I would like to thank all the pathologists all over the world! The unsung, least seen experts in diagnosis in the hospital. Stay kind and passionate when you share your experties and knowledge!
What a fascinating way of looking at cancer. Thank you for opening up about your own cancer story and I'm glad that you're doing well and managed to overcome your illness. The HeLa cells remind me of the book 'The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks' - those cells are an episode's worth of a story all on their own.
Your cancer looks so similar to the cancer that took my mom as a kid. Also so much like the cancer that teamed up with diabetes to give a beloved pug a sad, but thankfully peaceful forever rest. This disease also claimed so many of my loved ones and my loved ones of my loved ones. Thank you for the candid insight. I think it can both be hard and comforting seeing and learning about the cell-level science behind something that touches so many of us. Life and biology can be so strange but so beautiful. No idea if you'll read this, but I am so glad you're still here kicking butt, Hank!!! Everyone who does read this please try to make sure the people you love know you love them!
What an informative, captivating video and strong story! Thank you for sharing it. In combination with some kurzgesagt videos on cancer, I've been learning a lot. And as a side note: Being a lay person in microbiology who speaks English as a second language - though being not far from fluent in colloquial settings and in my own field of study - and although your pronounciation is very, very clear, I still dearly appreciate the thorough subtitling which makes it a whole lot easier for me (and I am sure: even for many native speakers) to follow along.
I'm currently studying Microbiology. Now, I'm thinking of taking up Oncology if ever I enter Medical practice. This video made me even more interested in the field.
I feel kind of dumb but I didn't realize you were Hank Green until like yesterday when I saw the 'ending channel update'. Thank you for this amazing channel/adventure into the micro-world. It's been amazing ❤
Finding cancer usually isn't done with immunostaining though. It's done by staining all cells (usually with hematoxylin and eosin) where you stain the cytoplasm and nuclei, with that stain you look for cells that have abnormal size and nuclei and might be in the wrong location (among other things, this stuff is complicated and difficult). Immunostaining is usually done to get more information: what cancer is it? How bad is it? Which treatments are viable?
microbes are more interesting than anything on TH-cam imo. I'm a math head who has learned a great deal from TH-cam and I still think this. Microbes are solo effing amazing!!
Its also the masterful way these videos are produced. The music, the vibe, the editing. Its all very intriguing yet relaxing. I can watch these video when i wanna learn and be engaged, or i can put them in the background while i fall asleep! I hope they keep making them forever, no other channels fill this niche for me
Never seen your channel until right now, but this is a really great video. Your voice over and editing are great, and I especially love the music choice. Congrats on beating your cancer!
"Cancer as a single-celled organism" is something thats been stuck in my head ever since I learned about Canine Transmissible Venereal Tumor. Its such a stark and fascinating reminder of how biology could not care less about human classificaiton systems. Like this is something that is functionally a single-celled parasitic organism, but phylogenetically a canine. Its kinda weird to say I have a favourite cancer, but canine cvt is so neat
Proud of you for beating that bugger! TH-cam probably brought me here because of my recent cancer related searches as my mom was diagnosed with a rare blood cancer that is slightly related to Hodgkin's Lymphoma. She has Essential Thrombocythaemia, meaning her bone marrow produces a lot more platelets (thrombocytes) than needed. Just recently her doctor told her that her odds of it developing into Leukemia are disturbingly high, about 15%. It's hard to live with this information but we need to pull through, and if needed, fight!
This was really interesting. My friend/mom figure just died of lung cancer last week. I’d love to know more about the details of this type of cancer and the fluid that started going into her lungs and heart (I guess having something to do with cells losing and emitting fluid?) ❤
Back in the mid-eighties I had to hand-carry my biopsy slides (and X-ray films!) to Big Cancer Hospital where I was going to be treated. Of course the first thing I did when I got my hands on them was to put them under our family's old light-reflector microscope. After all, my flight wasn't until the next day. They didn't look even close to as good as these slides! But still fascinating. Also all the CD14 typing and the like wasn't even being done yet. They hadn't yet even proved which cells for Hodgkin's turned cancerous. By the way, I had mixed cellularity, too.
This is a great video. Also, for a blood cancer like lymphoma, if chemo doesn’t work, a blood stem cell transplant is another treatment option. It’s utterly astonishing that as complex as our immune system is, if you have the same antigens on your cells as another person, your cancer can be cured by a transplant of their blood stem cells. I never stop being astonished at what happens in our bodies at the cellular level with no conscious input from us! Glad you are still with us, Hank. 🧡
I... I've been subscribed to this channel for a while now. I has genuinely helped me sooth my mind during some challenging times. But know, I look back at all that, and I just feel dumb, because I didn't realize that it was narrated by Hank Green. I'm happy, but also dissociating a bit.
Man with everything that has happened in our present time and journey through life. I'm glad I'm in a time where I can appreciate where life started and survived to see something marvelous and mindblowing like this. Like all life started from something this tiny and in a way we are still connected and unified in such a bizarre way to the very microverse. I mean we are basically the highly advanced form of our single celled ancestors with the intelligence to observe what were our rivals at one point in history.
9:59 this phrase reminds me of the movie Annihilation. More to the topic, I always thought that movie was what cancer would look like to a human if a human could have the perspective of a cell… or something like that.
Hank out here not just beating cancer but doxxing his cancer too.
Bump
bump
+
^
Yesss, expose those immature cells!
Honestly, the idea of cancer cells getting rebellious against the established order because of some nostalgia of their single-celled ancestors really is interesting.
It’s more like nostalgia for being a fetus. Cancer shows how dangerous being a man/womanchild really is.
Cells that become alienated from the greater "society" that is your body, and adopt self-serving "antisocial" behaviors.
Yes. Relatable
It's a very seducing idea, but it's also a very partial one.
From the perspective of aging multicellular organism, it's also a natural clock - the body self-destructing itself as it ages to leave more room for subsequent generations.
And there's also the issue that cancer cells aren't the only cells in our bodies to show a degree of individuality. Not all our cells work in perfect cooperation... and that's why there's so many auto-immune diseases.
The idea that cancer is an atavism of some sort makes sense intuitively, but the more you look at it, the more it just looks like a dysfunction.
The idea of the Noble Savage as cancer.
“This WAS my cancer.”
I got teary eyes hearing these words. goosebumps
Shoutout to the pathology labs around the world! They're the department that carries out the staining & diagnosis of biopsies and bodily fluids. Pathologists (MDs who have specialised in laboratory medicine) then inspect the slides, order additional tests, and diagnose based on the results.
The pathology department often gets overlooked by the general public as they tend to work in the background rather than directly with the patients. This unfortunately also means that a lot of medical laboratories face substantial shortages in personel! So they can use all the love & attention we can give them.
You must be a dermatologist/oncologist/hematologist to speak so highly of pathologist. Thank you for your words.
There are way to many MLTs getting churned out. The job market anywhere near an accrediting program is heavily flooded and the opposite is true for the Histo community due in part to the fact that at surface level it isn't apparent just how integral a pathology lab is in the grand diagnosis/treatment system. We don't work for patients. We work for the doctor that performed your surgery. Over the years they have also incrementally made accreditation more difficult as time goes on. Its become discouraging to young people. The average age of an employee in an IHC or histolab is upper 50's maybe even 60 now. The Histo community is understaffed as a whole but its manageable. In another 10-15 years though the bulk of us will be retiring. The time to train and educate a new generation is here now but no one wants to address it publicly. It's like driving a car and waiting until it dies on the side of the road before you get more gas. It's too late at that point. Our low fuel light is on but no one seems to be concerned.
@@chokobo0047 to hopefully ease your concern, I took years after high school finding a career, and I fell in love with pathology and Im dead set on the path and steps to get there. A lot of people my age are actually pretty interested in the background stuff that goes on anywhere really, so I wouldnt stress too much about not having another influx of pathologists or the like
It doesn't help that the work of an MLT and MLS is poorly compensated in my opinion with a lot of schooling, training and stress. Many of my peers and myself have left the industry due to literally not being able to afford living in our city while working 10 hour shifts, though histology is generally better compensated than general lab scientist or core lab. @@chokobo0047
I’m just started a job as a cytogenetic tech and this video felt like it was calling my name
As a cancer biologist who works on trying to understand how cancer cells invade and metastasize, I really do appreciate this video. Cancer cells are literally like its own organism, they move away to find more food and establish new home (yeah, that's essentially what metastases are!). I'm so glad Hank is doing better. But this video also shows how cancer research is so important. And the people who work in histology are also the unsung heroes for doing all the staining in the background just so the pathologist can look and diagnose. All very important work that needs to be recognised for!
There are many natural substances available that block Mets. There are many azoles and avermectins that are being used to treat. Fact.
Thank you for the kind words! I worked for a number of years as an HT then as an HTL, including at a cancer research lab, and we were always the invisible people. I look at these stains and say, yeah, I've done that. Histology itself is another fascinating science and sometimes, it is also an art form.
Hello there ! Just wanted to know what was your study path to become a cancer biologist. Im a pharmacy school student and im very interested in such domain but i dont know if its possible to pursue it after pharmacy school. Thank you and have a great day / night :)
@@peaceofmind5635 I did 3y BSc in Biochem, had done extensive study on cell biology, advanced cell biology, and cancer biology. Then did 4 y PhD in Cancer biology. Hope it helps.
I work in a pathology department for the last 4 years. I'm only the assistant admin but I love my job and the things I get to see. The pathologist i work with are so intelligent and some of the hardest working people I've ever worked with in my 25 years working experience. All though they don't see the patients they still care about those patients the same as if they did. It is a very rewarding job.
Y'all are true heroes. Especially during the pandemic. Thank you for what you do. c:
Man I remember when I logged into youtube one morning, and there was a new channel "Journey to the Microcosmos", where Hank was doing ASMR descriptions of tiny things and talking about how excited they were to have a fancy microscope. I remember when they upgraded, I remember so many things. 20k, 50k, 100k, 250k, and soon 1m. I LOVE this 'lab science' channel! It shows things that are in the world all around us, but that most of us would never see or know about. Here's hoping for many, MANY more years of Hank Green narrations!
I started following it when it was new, too. They were advertising it on the various scishows, if I remember right. It is very cool to see how it's grown over the years, and I'm glad they're getting the attention they deserve. Hank seems like a pretty cool dude (tm), and his team seem lovely, as well.
I worked for Mayo Clinic's Immunohistochemistry department as a diagnostic technologist, and this explanation was spot-on! I also worked in Fluorescent In-Situ Hybridization there, along with Next-Gen Sequencing. Now I'm with the University of Washington in Hematopathology, rediagnosing and combining all three kinds of techniques to diagnose cancers just like yours.
Love the shout out to us medical lab scientists; many people don't realize our job exists, and we are highly specialized staff working with physicians to come to diagnoses like yours. Keep doing your thing; I've loved all your channels since high school and keep inspiring others to learn to do cool science!!!
Y'all are true heroes, just sayin. Everyone in the medical department has an important job, even the cooks! I always do my best to treat medical staff with respect and patience (unless they give me reason not to. Long story.)
As a medical laboratory science graduate😂 I never had the chance to do.anything in lab after graduating from it💩 Im too depressed to even take my board exam.
But indeed this Job is amazing. 💩 I just somehow wish I aint this depressed
Is it possible for me to ask you a few questions please - i don't know how or where in more confidential setting
The fact that my body has had a couple of cancer cells grow inside me today but were killed by my immune cells before anything bad could happen 💀
Shout out to your WBCs ❤
Often HIV killed by the damaged immune system permitting the growth of rare “lottery win” chance cancers.
Or the fact that our bodies come in contact with many kinds of germs every day, the good ones and the bad ones. But our immune system protects the body, it works 24/7 and prevents further inflammation
No different than missing getting hit by a drunk driver because you stopped for 20 seconds to tie your shoes 3 blocks away. Life is random. We lull ourselves into thinking we're fully in control of everything, but you could just as easily wake up tomorrow morning and learn you have brain cancer. You just have to accept the possibility that something COULD happen at any moment to destroy you, or your life, or your livelihood, or your home, or your family/a family member. Life is random. But the fact that we have no control over these things doesn't have to be scary.
@@VoidHaloit is absolutely not true that we have no control at all over whether we get cancer, even if we’ll never have complete control. Who told you cancer is completely random?
Quick rectification. PAX5 is a transcription factor, so it is not expressed on the surface of cells. BCL2 is a protein that regulates cell death (apoptosis), it is also not on the surface but inside the cell, in the cytoplasm. Finally, cyclin D1 is involved in the cell cycle and it is not expressed on the surface. CD15, CD30 and CD20 are expressed on the surface of the cells. You can still see the other proteins because before labelling them with amtibodies we permeabilize and fix the cell membrane.
Thank you!!
+
Most informative, thank you! How do you know this, if I may ask?
@@marcbuerkle reading scientific papers!
I'm a neuroimmunologist@@marcbuerkle
As someone living with CLL, this was really, really interesting. Thank you and I’m so glad your cancer has gone.
never knew he had cancer to begin with!
Good luck with your recovery from CLL. I'm rooting for you!
@@nobody.of.importance thank you Melody.
As a pathologist, this beautiful video made me cry! Thank you. ¡Ay, es que me emocioné! it is always so uplifting to hear of a patient recovery :D
As a doctor who works with cancer terminal patients, thanks a lot for telling it this way, it is comforting and human…
We are all so glad you are cancer free and back with us. Good on ya!
Almost a year ago, I also operated on my first cancer. This one was on the skin and harmless, but still cancer. The operation was short and successful. Who knows what else awaits me at the end of my journey :)
Take care of yourself. You still have malign cells, check yourself more often
You operated on your own cancer? Not gonna lie your comment feels fake.
@@coronalight77 The doctors operated on me, I didn't do it myself :) Basal-cell carcinoma - that "disease" (better - the state of the organism) is in question
@user-fe1nr3ws1z The doctors said that everything was removed (on the surface of the skin it is easy to see) , but I will definitely check, thanks.
@@coronalight77assuming this was something like a stage 1 skin cancer and a bit of medical knowledge, it's not actually out of the realm of possibility, especially considering I basically did this myself with a DIY skin tag removal.
(Don't remove your own skin tags, folks. It hurts like you wouldn't believe and left me a nasty wound that took forever to heal.)
One thing that annoys me about modern people is that plenty of them think that cancer as a whole is a recent thing. “Cancer is because of processed food and not living clean” they say. When in fact cancer has been a part of life since the jump. They always either double down or open up when I tell them that we found osteosarcoma on fossils million upon millions of years old. Cancer been here forever and it’s not really going anywhere for the next couple of generations maybe. You could live the cleanest most straight edge life in existence and still get got like that.
Of course cancer has been around forever. Yet we know it’s mushroomed both in people and pets, and there’s loads of science showing how environmental factors, very much including diet, contribute. Ignore at your peril.
@@i.ehrenfest349 yes we have a lot of factors that go into increasing chances of cancer but those factors pending the person won’t do anything either. I wouldn’t exactly say cases are mushrooming either rather we’ve gotten so good at catching these things early and people screen more often that we’re catching more diagnoses what would’ve remained hidden for some time, and a great indicator for cancer seems to also be genetics. You have ww2 vets that drank and smoked every day and stay cancer free until a natural death of old age and triathletes that never poisoned their bodies ever and they catch lung cancer at 37 and die soon thereafter. Life’s not fair
@@i.ehrenfest349 You don't have to play the Smart ass dude, everyone is aware there are risk factors due to lifestyle and habits, the comment is aimed at people who victim-shame on cáncer patients almost blaming them for having it, whether they actually had a healthy life or not.
You are not discovering fire here dude, stop and move on.
Wild rats get more cancer than us. You can’t avoid it
How did I not know this channel was hosted by Hank green until now lol
I never recognized the voice until now either!
Really? His voice is very distinctive.
he's reaching simon whatshisface levels
I knew the voice- couldn't 'retrieve' the face!
VERY thought provoking vid!
He definitely changed mics for this show. It does deepen his voice a little bit.
Congrats on beating your cancer and staying on to educate all the rest of us
This reminded me of a former colleague. She taught biology. Every time she, her family, or friends had a procedure, she asked for samples or x-ray photos to use in her lessons. She had quite a collection. I donated skin from when I had a particularly bad case of eczema. Some colleagues thought that she was a ghoul!
Thank you, Hank, for being so open about your cancer. Every person like you brings it into the open instead of it being a topic of whispers and embarrassment. Congratulations on your recovery.
Histotech here, this is such a great video that explains some of what we do in the lab!
Five years in remission from colon cancer. I learned so much about life and love from my own journey. Wishing you many years of health and well being, Hank.
I'm always amazed by JTtM's capacity to teach us something new. Thank you, and thank you so much to Hank for putting these pieces of yourself under the microscope so we can all learn something new.
Had such a hard time reading" JTtM" because I'm so used to seeing "JtHM". It's a 2000s era comic book, tldr.
I am a principal scientist at a large pharma company where I develop novel IHC biomarker assays to help predict if an individual will benefit from our upcoming oncology drugs. Hank, you listing out the diagnostic markers at 3:30 gave me a big smile. A lot of work goes into the R&D for these tools, and its very rewarding hearing a recovering individual now in remission read out their own IHC pathology description.
Assuming you're telling the truth, since, y'know, this is youtube and all, y'all do important work. Keep it up.
Hank brothers dropping awesome videos today! What a badass thing to say "this is my cancer"!
"Was". Tenses are sometimes very important.
@@pattheplanter The writing on the thumbnail of the video literally says "is"
@@isstinna Not what he said in the video, though it was written in the thumbnail. "What a badass thing to write" doesn't work as well.
My sister is one of many of those lab experts. In her case, she's a pathologist assistant. She receives, preps, grosses and describes allllllll the specimens. The people in that lab are very good at the parts they do to make those diagnoses accurate and fast. I am proud of her! 🎉
This AND John's tuberculosis video on Crash Course?!? I feel so spoiled today. Thank you both for all that you do (:
Thanks for taking us on this particularly personal journey, Hank. So grateful you made it through it. I had heard of the notion that cancer is like your cells reverting back to unicellular life but am glad to now know that's called the atavistic model of cancer. As a bonus I can add atavism, a tendency to revert to something ancient or ancestral, to my vocabulary.
As someone who works in a pathology lab I was ready to give my explanations and corrections to Hank but then saw the comments already did that for me.
Very few people understand what goes on in my workplace so I’m glad to see people who understand
Never been so happy to hear the word "was"!
Hank, you are an amazing and lovely individual with a beautiful, inspirational and accessible voice. You're clearly genius levels of intelligent. I REALLY hope you will be okay! You truly deserve a stress-free life where you get to do what you love and learn in peace without being attacked by your own lymphocytes!
I have been expecting them to make a video on cancer for a while now, very epic.
The Green brothers are all powerful. Hank Green dropping a journey through his own cancer the same day John Green drops his Crash Course lecture on Tuberculosis was almost too much for me.
Really a beautiful reflection on the disease in this context.
My cancer let me know... tumor was eating a hole in my right kidney... I started peeing lots of Blood and "clots". A cat scan found the exact spot. Now with my right kidney removed and my cancer not being an aggressive type.. I should be fine...
“They were a single called organism whose most recent ancestors was me, but they were not me.”
Oof. Now that’s something to give people existential crises.
It is if you define "you" and build your identity around your body, while not questioning what even are "you" in the first place,
I think that existential crisis is healthy as to reflect upon what we are, be more existentially secure and truthful, and to solve such crisis is to rejuvenate our "meaning" on our own life, a recharge, a refresh of the soul? lol
Excellent episode from a spectacular channel! (So glad your treatment was a success, Hank! The world is a markedly better place with you, and James, and the rest of the team- in it!!)
Thanks for putting up the prostate cancer cell clip. So insightful to see what they are currently up to in me.
Time for bad cell jokes? Divide and conquer? 😆
Thank you for sharing your fascinating story. I’m glad you’re still here!
Hank, if you've never seen the anime Cell's at Work, you should watch the episode about cancer, it's a really interesting take. Cancer is a destructive villain, but it's framed as almost sympathetic, not having asked to exist the way that it does, but not having any other choice.
Cool! I'm gonna go check this out right now!
Hank Green's voice: Quiet mode.
It didn't sound like him the way I expected it to at first, but then after the intro it started to sound like him.
Glad you're in remission, Hank! Keep trucking on.
it's really annoying actually. he should just talk normally
@@MagicPlantsD1 hater that only comments about his voice…
@@MagicPlants how is this not talking normally
Im so glad you beat cancer, this is one of my favourite channels and Id be gutted to lose it.
Not only am i a Hank green fan but also a pathologist. It's so cool to see one of my favourite creators step into my world, which is often overlooked. I never thought i would see a tray of slides on a TH-cam video.
Stay well Hank
You're a strong dude, Henry. May you continue having fun with and discovering microbes for decades to come!
Thank you for another fabulous and thought-provoking clip. I look forward to sharing this with my students! It is wonderful that you have recovered and can continue to savor this remarkable thing that is life!
Thank you for sharing your cancer journey with us. You are no doubt an inspiration to others.
Recent graduate from medical laboratory science here and I’d like to say how great it is for this channel to talk about this topic. I worked as an intern in our laboratory’s histopath section and I enjoyed every single minute of it. From cutting sections of tissues to staining them and seeing our pathologist do their work using the tissues we processed really is fulfilling knowing that every slide could mean the difference in a patients’ life. Though, i get sad when I learn the results were positive for the disease suspected, more often than not already too late to treat. I can’t thank hank enough for bringing topics like cancer to the public from spreading awareness and sharing progresses in diagnostics and treatment to even sharing his own story and battles with his own cancer. I hope their content reaches to all especially to those who need it so that we can prevent and treat (especially if diagnosed early) diseases like cancer and less of us from the medical community have to see the unfortunate consequences of being too late to do anything or have to deal with cancer at all.
The 'experts' are called Pathologists. We are medical doctors who specialize in laboratory science. It is a medical subspecialty with board exams and requires years of training.
Hank, I've been wanting to say this to you for a long time- you are such a valuable part of humanity and I'm so glad you beat your cancers ass. The world needs you and those like you now more than ever and I, personally, feel a great sense of relief just knowing that you're out there making intelligent videos for the world to watch and learn from. Thank you so much for all you do. ❤
It is unfortunate that you had to go through this, but, the way you've turned it around and used it to educate us about cancer is inspiring. Well done, Hank, and thank you for being open about it and turning this horrible illness into a way to educate others.
There is a certain nobility in using your own misfortune to educate others about cancer on the cellular level. Thank you, Hank Green, for this insightful episode!
Congratulations 🎉. This is my first video and I am hooked 😊. Keep up the good work
Thank you for showing us your Hodgkin/Hodgkin's/John Hodgman Lymphoma cells. This is really interesting with the extra dimension of it being you talking about the microcosmos of ... you. And that you're okay now, thankfully.
It's wild you got these slides. Really interesting! I learned a lot!
Mind blown again! I love these.
Dear Hank. When you first made your reappearance, I almost cried. I have been watching you and John way more than any actors/actresses in the past decade. Thank you for coming back.
Med student here! I would like to thank all the pathologists all over the world! The unsung, least seen experts in diagnosis in the hospital. Stay kind and passionate when you share your experties and knowledge!
What a fascinating way of looking at cancer. Thank you for opening up about your own cancer story and I'm glad that you're doing well and managed to overcome your illness.
The HeLa cells remind me of the book 'The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks' - those cells are an episode's worth of a story all on their own.
What are HeLa cells?
I've googled it and it's blown my mind. 🤯
I have been sick for like 2-3 months now and I’m terrified to find out if I have cancer or something… love you Hank. Glad you’re good.
Your cancer looks so similar to the cancer that took my mom as a kid. Also so much like the cancer that teamed up with diabetes to give a beloved pug a sad, but thankfully peaceful forever rest. This disease also claimed so many of my loved ones and my loved ones of my loved ones. Thank you for the candid insight. I think it can both be hard and comforting seeing and learning about the cell-level science behind something that touches so many of us. Life and biology can be so strange but so beautiful. No idea if you'll read this, but I am so glad you're still here kicking butt, Hank!!! Everyone who does read this please try to make sure the people you love know you love them!
I knew you were going to make this episode. May your remission be permanent, Hank.
What an informative, captivating video and strong story! Thank you for sharing it. In combination with some kurzgesagt videos on cancer, I've been learning a lot.
And as a side note: Being a lay person in microbiology who speaks English as a second language - though being not far from fluent in colloquial settings and in my own field of study - and although your pronounciation is very, very clear, I still dearly appreciate the thorough subtitling which makes it a whole lot easier for me (and I am sure: even for many native speakers) to follow along.
Anyone else just find out that the voice is Hank? Never out the two together. I follow you in instagram. Makes me so happy that it’s tou
12:33 I was definitely thinking about how you went about requesting your slides 😅😊
I'm currently studying Microbiology. Now, I'm thinking of taking up Oncology if ever I enter Medical practice. This video made me even more interested in the field.
I feel kind of dumb but I didn't realize you were Hank Green until like yesterday when I saw the 'ending channel update'. Thank you for this amazing channel/adventure into the micro-world. It's been amazing ❤
I'm glad you are still with us, you have a very soothing voice on in this series
Very insightful. Congratulations for beating cancer!
Hank's cancer: You're freggin dead, pal
Hank: No, but you're content
Finding cancer usually isn't done with immunostaining though. It's done by staining all cells (usually with hematoxylin and eosin) where you stain the cytoplasm and nuclei, with that stain you look for cells that have abnormal size and nuclei and might be in the wrong location (among other things, this stuff is complicated and difficult).
Immunostaining is usually done to get more information: what cancer is it? How bad is it? Which treatments are viable?
There are science communicators then there's Hank "here are my own cancer slides for free online science education" Green
So glad he’s still with us
microbes are more interesting than 99% of the stuff on youtube lmao
Plus, it's not brain rot, it's brain food
Your comment just made me poopoo my fanties! jajajajajaja
Seeing as each of us only bothers to watch .01% of what's on TH-cam yes. If your reading this that's true.
microbes are more interesting than anything on TH-cam imo. I'm a math head who has learned a great deal from TH-cam and I still think this. Microbes are solo effing amazing!!
Its also the masterful way these videos are produced. The music, the vibe, the editing. Its all very intriguing yet relaxing. I can watch these video when i wanna learn and be engaged, or i can put them in the background while i fall asleep! I hope they keep making them forever, no other channels fill this niche for me
Never seen your channel until right now, but this is a really great video. Your voice over and editing are great, and I especially love the music choice.
Congrats on beating your cancer!
Bravo! So happy you beat it, and so glad you wanted to share. This was very informative. Thankyou.
"Cancer as a single-celled organism" is something thats been stuck in my head ever since I learned about Canine Transmissible Venereal Tumor. Its such a stark and fascinating reminder of how biology could not care less about human classificaiton systems. Like this is something that is functionally a single-celled parasitic organism, but phylogenetically a canine.
Its kinda weird to say I have a favourite cancer, but canine cvt is so neat
You blew my mind Hank when you said, “reversion to single cellular life.” It makes sense. Great video.
This is now more relatable than ever bc my cat has terminal liver cancer. Thank you for uploading.
I'm sorry to hear this, but at least they have you as their family.
Proud of you for beating that bugger!
TH-cam probably brought me here because of my recent cancer related searches as my mom was diagnosed with a rare blood cancer that is slightly related to Hodgkin's Lymphoma.
She has Essential Thrombocythaemia, meaning her bone marrow produces a lot more platelets (thrombocytes) than needed.
Just recently her doctor told her that her odds of it developing into Leukemia are disturbingly high, about 15%. It's hard to live with this information but we need to pull through, and if needed, fight!
Thank you, Hank. I was looking for a video like this for a long time.
What a powerful word.
"was"
Missed you hank good to know you’re still kickin
This was really interesting. My friend/mom figure just died of lung cancer last week. I’d love to know more about the details of this type of cancer and the fluid that started going into her lungs and heart (I guess having something to do with cells losing and emitting fluid?) ❤
Back in the mid-eighties I had to hand-carry my biopsy slides (and X-ray films!) to Big Cancer Hospital where I was going to be treated. Of course the first thing I did when I got my hands on them was to put them under our family's old light-reflector microscope. After all, my flight wasn't until the next day. They didn't look even close to as good as these slides! But still fascinating. Also all the CD14 typing and the like wasn't even being done yet. They hadn't yet even proved which cells for Hodgkin's turned cancerous. By the way, I had mixed cellularity, too.
Thank you so much for sharing this, Hank. You rock.
This is a great video. Also, for a blood cancer like lymphoma, if chemo doesn’t work, a blood stem cell transplant is another treatment option. It’s utterly astonishing that as complex as our immune system is, if you have the same antigens on your cells as another person, your cancer can be cured by a transplant of their blood stem cells. I never stop being astonished at what happens in our bodies at the cellular level with no conscious input from us! Glad you are still with us, Hank. 🧡
I... I've been subscribed to this channel for a while now. I has genuinely helped me sooth my mind during some challenging times.
But know, I look back at all that, and I just feel dumb, because I didn't realize that it was narrated by Hank Green.
I'm happy, but also dissociating a bit.
Very interesting perspective. Thanks for sharing with us Hank
having a slide of your cancer is awesome
I’m a histotechnologist! I love my job. I am also a hematologist. We would have done a PBF as well for an indicator.
Man with everything that has happened in our present time and journey through life. I'm glad I'm in a time where I can appreciate where life started and survived to see something marvelous and mindblowing like this. Like all life started from something this tiny and in a way we are still connected and unified in such a bizarre way to the very microverse. I mean we are basically the highly advanced form of our single celled ancestors with the intelligence to observe what were our rivals at one point in history.
As a fellow cancer survivor, WE WILL SURVIVE!
I love the Darwinian take on cancers. It's interesting how one's own cells can start to behave as parasitic single-celled organisms.
I'm glad to hear that you are now stable.
As someone who studied histology for my job, I was able to comprehend and appreciate the terminology used in this video.
Hank still riding the curiosity wave of OMG The Science is ME!!!
Congrats on beating the cancer. ❤ I got a friend who works in this field. They have come a long way in the last decade or so.
9:59 this phrase reminds me of the movie Annihilation. More to the topic, I always thought that movie was what cancer would look like to a human if a human could have the perspective of a cell… or something like that.
Hank, you are an inspiration to all of us. Keep on keeping on! You are a badass
Thanks for the great video. Wish you best health, man. 🙏
The imagery is mind blowing.