"This is your one and only warning." "Your screen will soon be filled with dramatized stories of scientific research that some people may find controversial and disturbing." "Viewer discretion is advised." "Ask yourself, does progress always come at a price?" "Are some experiments too risky or just wrong?" "A little curiosity can't hurt anyone." "Can it?" "Dark Matters:" "Twisted but True 2x01 Lindbergh;" "American Nazi;" "Suicide Song;" "Living Organ Donor Original Air Date on July 14, 2012" "== sync, corrected by elderman ==" "Scientific knowledge cannot be unlearned." "It has a power of its own." "No matter how or why it is obtained, good or evil intentions do not always result in good and evil outcomes, as you'll see in these three stories of experimentation and unforeseen consequences." "I'll introduce you to a song that is emotionally powerful and memorable..." "If you can survive hearing it." "And you'll meet a man whose stomach offered a window into the wonders of human biology." "His doctor couldn't keep his hands off him." "But first, meet an all-American hero whose quests to extend human life led him down the path to Fascism." "He wanted the power to save lives, but did that give him the right to decide who deserves to live?" "At the age of 25, engineer Charles Lindbergh aims to become the first man to fly solo across the Atlantic." "The gifted pilot and engineer has helped develop a new plane to do this -- the Spirit of St. Louis." "In 1927, Lindbergh was a mail pilot." "He learned that there was a $25,000 prize being offered for the first person to make a transatlantic solo flight." "This was an extraordinary amount of money, because this would be an extraordinary feat." "It was unheard of -- an unheard of distance." "3,500 miles of open ocean -- no place to land." "Any error, any mistake is a death sentence." "Six men have already died in the attempt." "But alone in the clouds, Lindbergh feels invincible." "There were times in an aeroplane when it seemed I had escaped mortality to look down on earth like a God." "When Lindbergh makes it to France, he steps into the history books." "Even he couldn't have predicted that 100,000 people would turn out on the airfield outside of Paris to greet him, that he would, in fact, become the most famous man on the planet." "It was an achievement of both his endurance and skill as an aviator and also his technical skill as an engineer." "The young pilot is idolized and honored like no other American." "Lindbergh is the most famous man on earth." "He's Time's first man of the year." "He can't walk down the street without attracting a crowd." "He's a celebrity to end all celebrities." "Two years after his transatlantic flight," "Lindbergh uses his fame and his engineering skills to attack a problem infinitely more challenging." "Can he beat death with engineering just as he conquered the skies?" "Elizabeth Morrow is Charles Lindbergh's sister-in-law." "She developed something called rheumatic fever, which is an infection that can result in damage to one of the heart valves." "In the 1920s, there was no solution, so people eventually died of heart failure." "Look, I've been thinking." "All humans are like machines, really." "She's not a machine, Charles." "No, no, of course not, but I can fix a machine." "It's really not difficult." "She has a faulty valve, so we replace it." "I do it all the time." "You don't need an -- you can't fix this, Charles." "Lindbergh is an engineer, and he thought of the heart as a pump." "In fact, that's what it is." "The heart is composed of four chambers, separated by valves, and the purpose of the heart, which is a large, thick muscle, is to contract and to push the blood forward from one chamber into another." "Each of the chambers are separated by valves, which close and open in synchrony so that the blood is pushed in one direction." "So, essentially, Lindbergh was correct." "The most famous man on the planet has no trouble getting an appointment with world-renowned French biologist Dr. Alexis Carrel." "Sit." "Carrel is already tinkering with the way living things work." "Say, what's that?" "I'm breeding a race of heroic mice." "I plan to use these methods to create humans who can jump 20 feet in the air and live for 200 years." "Lindbergh wants to fix people as he would a machine." "Your ideas are interesting." "But surgery turns out to be very different from the engineering Lindbergh knows about." "It won't work." "Why not?" "Suppose you had a damaged part in one of your flying machines." "How would you fix that?" "I'd pull it out and bolt in a replacement." "Exactly." "To mend a human heart, you need a spare one to bolt in." "If you're serious about this, that's the first problem you have to solve -- how do you keep the spare parts alive?" "This was a problem close to Carrel's heart." "Carrel was a surgical genius." "He had done organ transplantation on a dog years before meeting Lindbergh." "Carrel's idea was that he wanted to have organs available off the shelf for transplant when they were needed." "Now, while Carrel was able to keep the organs alive, the problem he had is that they all eventually died from infection, and this was a problem that Carrel could not solve." "If you could build a mechanical pump that didn't get infected, could you?" "Keep a human heart alive?" "In theory, indefinitely." "Because, you see, as you might have heard," "I'm good with machines." "You would have to be better than good." "I am." "Lindbergh and Carrel had a very interesting interaction." "They were two strong, complicated men, but they became like a father and son, like a mentor and mentee." "They got along very well." "Lindbergh wants to save his sister-in-law, but Carrel wants to change the world." "The weak, the disabled, the fools -- what is their value?" "With a little help, the strong and intelligent persist instead and so create a super-race." "Just to be clear, you and me are in that camp, right?" "Lindbergh builds a pump that can move life-giving fluids around an organ." "This is one of Lindbergh's original pumps." "Because it is made entirely from glass, it can be steam-sterilized, preventing infection." "Using Lindbergh's pump, they succeed in keeping a cat's thyroid alive for months." "They believe the technique should work equally well with human organs." "But it all comes too late for Elizabeth Morrow." "She dies in December 1934 of heart failure." "You can't fix this, Charles." "You can't fix this, Charles." "But Lindbergh has a new reason to continue." "Carrel's ideas of preserving the best in society have captured Lindbergh's imagination." "It's called eugenics." "The strong are given females to impregnate." "The weak are devoured." "Lindbergh was becoming increasingly enamored of the idea of eugenics, the notion that there were superior and inferior people in society." "In Nazi Germany, it had been decided that Jews and gypsies and homosexuals were inferior people." "To Lindbergh, these rational ideas make perfect sense." "He has no idea of the horrors that await him." "Charles Lindbergh is working with Alexis Carrel to extend human life, but his elitist ideals have led him towards Nazi Germany." "Given his interest in eugenics, it's not surprising that Lindbergh actually considered, for a while, actually moving to Berlin." "And he and Carrel shared a number of these eugenic ideals and with a faith in a society run by superior beings." "But in so doing," "Lindbergh actually went much further than Carrel did." "Carrel may love eugenics, but he hates the Germans." "To him, they're nothing more than warmongering thugs." "Carrel actually detested the Nazis, even as he shared Lindbergh's ideas about the importance of superior men running a society." "The outbreak of World War II intensified their opposing positions." "The Germans are going to win, anyway." "Aren't they already the super-race we are both hoping for?" "Super-race?" "The Nazis?" "I don't think so." "They love war too much." "But Alexis " "They have invaded my country!" "Sorry, Charles." "Carrel abandons their research and returns to war-torn France." "In support of Nazi ideals, Lindbergh begins a high-profile campaign to keep America out of the war." "But on December 7, 1941, Germany's ally attacks America." "Lindbergh's pro-Nazi stance is now untenable." "Lindbergh asked to rejoin the military but was publicly banned from doing so by the President, who called him "unpatriotic."" "So he went to work with Henry Ford instead, helping to build the B-24 Liberator bombers." "He kept on badgering the military, however, and was eventually granted permission to fly about 50 combat missions." "Morning." "By the end of the war," "Lindbergh has earned back the trust of his fellow Americans." "U.S. War Department asks the brilliant engineer to examine the super-weapon of the future -- rockets." "Lindbergh was sent to Germany to investigate the factories that produce the V-2 rockets." "Lindbergh visits Camp Dora, where V-2 rockets were manufactured by slave laborers -- those the Nazis considered inferior." "If you adopt a eugenic approach to society as the Nazis did, you have to make decisions about those individuals that are acceptable and those that aren't acceptable, those that are considered bad." "And this is what the Nazis did." "They took all of those degenerates, those bad individuals, and they eradicated them in order to conserve their resources just for those people that they considered to be eugenically pure, good individuals." "This is the ultimate reality of the eugenic principle." "Lindbergh is confronted with the true consequences of the eugenic ideals he has supported." "He had gone, expecting to see the future of machinery." "What he found instead was death." "He saw the furnaces that incinerated more than 25,000 of the slave workers who were there." "The smell was overpowering." "It was the same smell." "There was the same smell of the smell of the mousery in Carrel's lab." "It was the smell of the strong devouring the weak, the smell of fear, cruelty, and death." "Oh, God!" "The choice of who should live and who should die is one he no longer cares to make." "He turns his back on eugenics and never speaks of extending life again." "Don't you hate it when a song gets stuck in your head?" "But what if that song was more than just an annoyance?" "When police encounter a cluster of corpses, their clues point to a washed-up circus performer who has turned his hand to songwriting and has somehow created a song that can kill." "Throughout human history, great artists have moved us with their dreams, their desires, the deepest suffering of their souls." "But when one song becomes linked to 18 suicides, you have to ask, can a work of art do more than just touch us?" "Can a song make you want to die?" "Warning -- listening to this song could be extremely hazardous to your health." "A new craze is sweeping across the Hungarian capital -- suicide." "One suicide is tragic." "Two -- a coincidence." "But 3, 4, 18 individual suicides is bizarre." "Detectives discover something they all share -- music." ""Gloomy Sunday."" "A song that can kill?" "Is music really that powerful?" "They are very few things shared by every human culture, but the ones that we find everywhere are language and music, which suggests that there's some fundamental connection between music and the way our brain functions." "Recent research has found that uplifting music affects the limbic system in your brain -- the emotional center -- releasing endorphins, which makes you feel good." "So this connection between music and the functioning brain is quite profound." "The story of the suicide song begins six years earlier, when Rezso Seress falls from the high wire." "It ends his career in the circus." "To make ends meet, he plays piano at a restaurant called the Kispipa, said to be the coldest in central Europe." "Hey, László!" "Life still wonderful?" "Ilka." "Ilka has left me." "I know." "That was six months ago." "Lost love, poverty, failing health -- these can be found anywhere, but Hungary in the early '30s has a particularly rough time." "The great depression hits hard, anti-semitism is on the rise," "Fascist politicians come to power." "Against this backdrop of personal failure and communal fear," "Rezso begins to compose his infamous song." "But when he plays his first attempt to his friend..." "What do you think?" "...poet László Jávor is not impressed." "The lyrics are a little distant." "Yes, yes, but..."My tears and sorrows are all in vain."" "Mm-hmm." ""People are heartless, greedy, wicked." "The world is dead."" "What?" "Well, don't you want a bit more of a hook?" "A love story, maybe -- something to make them bite." "If I want to make them bite," "I would become a dentist like my mother told me." "I want to make them weep." "I want them to hear me call out from the Siberia of my soul." "László writes new lyrics to make the song even darker than Rezso's depressing first attempt." "They call it "Gloomy Sunday."" "This is the original English-language sheet music for "Gloomy Sunday."" "In the song, a man invites his dead lover to come to his own funeral because he killed himself because she's dead." "So it's a sad song." "And that's before you've even played a note of the music." "But when the song is released, the deaths begin." ""Gloomy is Sunday." ""With shadows, I spend it all." "My heart and I have decided to end it all."" "These are the lyrics police discover on one suicide note." ""Soon, there'll be candles and prayers that are sad, I know." ""Let them not weep." "Let them know that I'm glad to go."" "In another suicide, a record of "Gloomy Sunday" is on the player." "And victims dragged from the Danube are found clutching the sheet music." ""Death is no dream, for in death, I'm caressing you." ""With the last breath of my soul, I am caressing you." "Gloomy Sunday."" "It's not just the lyrics that affect people's minds." "The music itself can be equally dangerous." "Research has found that music can have a profoundly negative effect on our emotional state." "Unpleasant music triggers the posterior cingulate cortex, which is right here." "In brain scans, this area lights up when people are confronted with emotional pain or situations of conflict." "And so, there's a suspicion that we may be relating discordant music with negative speech." "And "Gloomy Sunday," by accident or design, hits all the right notes." "This song is written in a minor key, and that's very important." "A major key sounds like this." "Very warm." "Studies have shown that the frequencies in a major key are similar to our voice when we're talking in an excited way." "This is what a minor key sounds like." "Slightly sad and melancholy." "Studies have shown those frequencies are very similar to our voices when we're depressed or sad." "So this song pushes many depressing buttons." "In fact, it's depressing just talking about it." "Is this song so bad it inspires suicide?" "Or is it so good that people are overwhelmed by emotion?" "How many more might die if it is ever released around the world?" "One song, "Gloomy Sunday,"" "is linked with 18 suicides in Hungary alone." "Now it's gaining worldwide popularity." "The song took off internationally." "It was covered by major artists in Britain, in France, in the U.S., even in Russia and Japan." "But it was when the American and the British press began to make the connection with the spate of suicides that deeper concern arose." "Reuter tells of a Hungarian who has written a song called "Gloomy Sunday,"" "which is so dispiriting that 18 people are said to have committed suicide after listening to it." "Scientific research suggests that suicides can be contagious." "It's known as the Werther Effect." "The effect goes back to 1774, with the release of Goethe's book" ""The Sorrows of Young Werther,"" "which is a novel about a young man who commits suicide." "After the release of that book, the number of suicides went up unexpectedly." "In fact, back in 1962, when Marilyn Monroe took her life, the number of suicides after that event went up 12%, which doesn't sound like much, but that's about 303 additional suicides." "With the flames of World War II fanning out across Europe, the BBC bans "Gloomy Sunday," citing concerns over morale." "In America, they are less cautious." "Billie Holliday records what will become its most famous version." "Despite the international controversy," "Rezso earns a fortune in royalties, waiting for him in a New York bank." "But he is stuck in communist Hungary." "His other works, such as "Waiter, bring me the bill"" "and "I love being drunk," are flops." "How could he convince the Communists to let him go to America and collect his money?" "He could always try playing them his hit record, "Gloomy Sunday."" "A warning -- listening to this song could be extremely hazardous to your health, so you do so at your own risk." "♪ My heart and I" "♪ have decided to end it all" "♪ soon, there'll be candles" "♪ and prayers that are sad, I know ♪" "♪ let them not weep" "♪ let them know that I'm glad to go ♪" "♪ death is no dream" "♪ for, in death, I'm caressing you ♪" "♪ with the last breath of my soul ♪" "♪ I'll be blessing you" "♪ gloomy Sunday" "Rezso never gets to leave his country." "And "Gloomy Sunday's" lethal power does not appear to have affected the world." "Hungary was uniquely suited to a song that could kill." "It was released during the Hungarian depression, and its gloomy lyrics and music had effects on the brain that we are only beginning to understand." "And Rezso could not have inflicted "Gloomy Sunday"" "on a more suicide-prone country." "In the 20th Century, Hungary has had the highest rate of suicide." "From 1978 to 1995, the rate was 40 out of 100,000 people committing suicide." "For comparison with the U.S., the rate was 11." "The story of Rezso Seress ends with one more victim of suicide." "Destitute and depressed, in 1968, he jumps from the window of his Budapest apartment." "Perhaps Rezso also fell victim to the curse of "Gloomy Sunday."" "For most people, surviving a gruesome injury is a lucky escape." "But what if cheating death means becoming trapped in a living hell?" "One man endured a life of pain and constant experimentation at the hands of a doctor more interested in furthering science than the health of his patient, a patient transformed into a human test tube." "People sometimes donate their bodies after death for the training of doctors." "But suppose medical science was after your body while you were still using it." "Imagine being held against your will so that your personal anatomy could be endlessly violated for the benefit of a doctor's career." "In the War of 1812, surgeon's mate Dr. William Beaumont needs only two things..." "Keep 'em coming!" "...a saw and a sewing kit." "Through." "Take it away." "During the Battle of York," "Beaumont spends two days amputating limbs." "Hang in there, son." "Not one of his 200 patients dies." "But nine years later, in peacetime," "Dr. Beaumont meets a wound like no other." "Put him down." "Put this under his head." "Lift him up." "He will later refer to it as "magic."" "Can you tell me your name?" "St. Martin." "Ale-- ale" " Alexis St. Martin." "Good to meet you, son." "This is gonna hurt now, but we're gonna fix you up right." "Alexis St. Martin has been accidentally shot by a hunter's musket." "The hole it leaves in his side changes his life and the course of medical science." "It's as bad as anything Beaumont's seen in war." "A large portion of his side was blown off." "Several organs were lacerated." "There was a perforation in the stomach through which breakfast food was escaping." "It was an altogether miserable and hopeless case." "With Beaumont's help, Alexis St. Martin survives." "Morning." "Doctor." "You're doing well." "Be up and about in no time." "I can get back to work, then?" "Well, now, hold your horses, son." "Your body's good and strong, but you know as well as I do this wound in your side..." "I don't know." "I've never seen the like." "It just won't stay shut." "St. Martin was able to survive his injury, which was a gunshot wound to the abdomen, because he developed what's called a gastrocutaneous fistula." "What happened is he was shot with a bullet that went through his skin, the fat, and the muscle of his abdominal wall." "That bullet wound actually then entered his stomach, which is here." "Now, as his injury healed, the stomach and the abdominal wall scarred together, leaving him with an opening through his skin into the inside of his stomach, which meant that when he ate, he actually had to put a plug or some gauze over the hole" "to prevent food from coming out." "Beaumont takes Alexis into his home and cares for him." "From a certain angle, he can see right into the fistula and actually watch food being digested inside Alexis' stomach." "That is truly astonishing." "That is miraculous." "Nobody in the history of science has observed digestion inside a living, breathing man." "Before this time, people really didn't know what was happening inside the stomach." "Was it chemical?" "Was it mechanical grinding?" "Was it a crushing effect?" "As Alexis recovers, Beaumont employs him as a handyman." "Good day." "I chop wood." "I do a woman's chores." "It's not a man's life." "The hole in Alexis' stomach traps him in an unfamiliar world." "St. Martin was really an outdoorsman." "As a voyageur and a fur trader, he was used to carrying his canoe over rapids and around waterfalls." "He traded with the native Americans." "He was a man who was used to living under the open skies." "Despite numerous attempts," "Beaumont cannot close the hole." "So he comes up with an alternative career for his patient -- guinea pig." "It's just a couple of tests." "They'll cause you..." "no discomfort, no pain." "What about going home?" "I'll introduce some samples into the wound and " "And do what?" "Learn about the gastric system." "Alexis, you don't understand." "You're a medical wonder." "No." "I'm just a canoe man." "The guides at the dock already have enough names for me, thanks." "No, I don't want to." "You'll be furthering the course of medical science." "But you cannot fix me." "So, what about going home?" "Have I not nursed you back to life?" "Have I not cared for you at my own expense for two years?" "It's just a couple of tests." "Beaumont's notes on Alexis' injury become the beginnings of a book on the gastric system." "When Beaumont is reassigned by the military to upstate New York, he takes Alexis with him and begins experimenting inside his patient." "Now, hold still." "Essentially, he has a finger-sized hole leading directly into his stomach, so digestive processes could continue to happen and he could watch it." "So, one experiment, where he tied a piece of meat to a string, put it directly into the fistula, which is in the stomach, and pulled it out over time to see what would happen " "so he was essentially watching digestion happen in real time." "Stomach juices are largely composed of hydrochloric acid." "What Beaumont observes is much like this burger dissolving in a beaker of acid." "In a few hours, it becomes black goo." "This process happens inside your body every day, but Beaumont finds that meat put directly into Alexis' stomach is digested even faster than in a test tube." "So there's something extra, other than just acid, that's digesting the meat inside the stomach." "Fascinating." "Beaumont is seeing enzymes at work -- proteins that speed up digestion by the stomach acid." "The notes for his book are full of groundbreaking science." "Let's try some of this." "So, tell me, Doctor, if you could close the hole, would you?" "Well, now, look, son, there's just so much to learn from it." "So I thought." "Well, it does not matter." "You cannot fix it anyway, can you?" "You cannot fix me." "Why do I need a doctor?" "Son, this is changing science." "You are changing science." "This does nothing for me." "You cannot make me better, can you?" "This is for your learning, that is all." "What about Alexis St. Martin, Doctor, huh?" "Of course, if I was better, you'd have no more science, would you?" "Alexis is no longer Beaumont's patient." "He is a human test tube who will make the doctor famous." "Doctor William Beaumont is experimenting on a man's stomach through a gruesome hole known as a gastric fistula." "But something keeps getting in the way of Beaumont's relationship with the fascinating hole -- its owner, his patient, Alexis St. Martin." "How much longer, Doctor?" "Well done." "Good work." "Hey." "Hey!" "Up here." "I'm a man, not an experiment." "Of course." "At the time, there was no contract for a patient to be protected or rules under which science had to be done." "As a result, what was happening was a relationship between the physician and his patient, and an unequal relationship, because the physician had much more to gain from these experiments than his patient did." "Beaumont did not immediately start experimenting on St. Martin." "He did try for months and months to close the fistula." "But failing to close it, he had an unparalleled opportunity, and I think some people would have argued that it would have been unethical not to take advantage of this kind of natural experiment." "It ain't so bad." "All settled in?" "Oui." "Alexis needs money when he gets married." "He's forced to work with Beaumont to help support his wife." "Hello, old friend." "Beaumont continues his experiments, investigating how food breaks down inside the body." "He records the effect of Alexis' changing moods on digestion." "Stop pulling at it." "Could you stop?" "I told you to stop pulling it!" "Just one more sample." "He notes that irritability seems to inhibit digestion, but that was not all he discovered." "Beaumont also studied the effects of temperature on digestion." "He found that food digested more quickly in warm gastric juice as opposed to cooler gastric juice." "Now, this was breakthrough science at his time." "Today, we understand that this is because chemical reactions proceed more quickly when the temperature is higher." "Beaumont is gaining valuable data for his book, but Alexis has had enough." "He runs away to Canada." "It takes Beaumont a year and a half to find him and persuade him to return." "He won't let his medical miracle get away again." "He enlists Alexis into the army, where the punishment for desertion is death." "Welcome back, Alexis." "Once more, Beaumont gets his hands on Alexis' gut, which he now calls "old fistulus."" "So, what Beaumont wants to know now is whether there's a difference between eating food naturally versus simply putting food in his stomach, and he tries this with many different foods -- mutton, oysters, pork -- to see what the differences are." "And what he finds is that chewing food through the mouth is digesting faster than putting food directly into the stomach." "And the difference here is that food is being broken down and that enzymes are being released in the mouth, which allows the digestive process to happen faster that way." "Put this under his head." "In the 10 years since Alexis came into Beaumont's care," "Beaumont's discovered more about the human digestive system than any scientist before him." "But Alexis' life has become intolerable." "Will you wait for me outside?" "Following the death of one of his children, he leaves for what he says is a short trip to Canada." "See you in a month." "Oui." "Alexis will never return." "Beaumont's bird has flown for good." "Though his human test tube never returns," "Beaumont decides to publish his groundbreaking book anyway." "Despite being unable to continue his research," "Beaumont had hit the jackpot with his book." "He had figured out that digestion was a chemical, not a mechanical, process, and his diet tables continued to be used as his book became the authoritative source for the next 100 years." "He had become the father of gastric physiology." "St. Martin, by contrast, had a rougher go of it." "After so many years of being somebody else's guinea pig, he was ready to get on with his life." "Alexis St. Martin escapes to his beloved Canadian wilderness, where he lives to the age of 86." "The hole in his stomach never closes." "== sync, corrected by elderman =="