That Chicken Heart was Real!

I have always loved Bill Cosby's humor. I listened to him as a kid and memorized his bits, repeating them to my friends as if I were as funny as Cosby himself. Then when I had kids, I introduced them to Bill Cosby, and together in the car, we recite Bill Cosby comedy sketches from Savannah to Atlanta. Once, when I was in graduate school, driving from Savannah to Athens every week, I put a Cosby CD in the stereo and listened to it for about half an hour until I realized I was laughing so hard that my eyes were closed, and I couldn't see the road.

My favorite Cosby sketch is titled "Chicken Heart," and in this sketch, Cosby recalls being home alone at night and listening to horror shows on the radio. One of his favorites, he said, was called Lights Out, and one memorable episode was about a chicken heart that ate New York. As Cosby recalls the Lights Out script, interjecting the "boom boom" of heart beats at the end of every line, he has me giggling throughout his piece. You can hear "Chicken Heart" at this link: http://www.top-buzz.net/2009/04/bill-cosby-chicken-heart/

But what I never realized until last night was that that chicken heart was real! I am currently reading Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, which explains the emergence of the HeLa cells, which scientists still use today for research. Prior to stealing Henrietta Lacks's cells for reproduction, one crazy scientist tried to duplicate cells from a chicken heart, and for twenty years, he claimed the experiment had succeeded, until it was discovered that he "had been putting new cells in the culture dishes each time he 'fed' them using an 'embryo juice' he made from ground tissues." For two decades, people believed those chicken heart cells were reproducing, but all the while, they were dying and new cells were being created.

But before that failure came to light, this scientist claimed that tissue culture would "change the face of medicine." Eventually he claimed that reproduced cells could reach a volume that would cover the solar system, and the media began reporting that the reproduced chicken heart cells might one day create a giant chicken that would cross the Atlantic ocean in one step. People began to fear the chicken heart, and the radio show was born, as Skloot explains:

"But the fear of tissue culture truly found its way into American living rooms in an episode of Lights Out, a 1930s radio horror show that told the story of a fictional Dr. Alberts who'd created an immortal chicken heart in his lab. It grew out of control, filling the city streets like The Blob, consuming everyone and everything in its path. In only two weeks it destroyed the entire country."

All these years I thought Cosby made up the show Lights Out and the chicken heart episode. But I guess he really did listen to that show as a kid. I wonder if he was aware that an actual chicken heart was growing (or trying to grow) in a nearby lab. I also wonder if he really did spread Jello on his floor in order to keep the chicken heart from coming inside.

Boom boom.

P. S. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a fascinating read, even if you're not a scientist. I highly recommend it.