- This video is sponsored
by DollarShaveClub.
So, you wanna be like Captain America.
Trust me, I get it.
Perhaps you resonate with
the story of a frail kid
named Steve Rogers who underwent
a government experiment
scientifically amping up his body and mind
with a mysterious
chemical concoction known
as super soldier serum that transformed
this sickly subject into
the star-spangled superhero.
A hero with superhuman strength,
speed, agility, and endurance.
An exceptional leader regarding
his ability to problem solve
and strategize and
inspire those around him.
His lightning-fast mental
and physical reflexes
allowed him to turn a Frisbee into one
of the coolest weapons
in the superhero game!
How is that, who else can do that?
- Hey, yeah let's have it.
(dramatic music)
- [Scott] Okay, that's admittedly close,
but now I legally have to insist
that you don't do this, please.
But Captain America's powers and abilities
are due to that secretive
super soldier serum.
Initially, it was described
as a strange seething liquid
coursing through Cap's blood,
rapidly building his body
and brain tissues until his
stature and intelligence
increase to an amazing degree.
Captain America was a crowning achievement
that was meant to signal the
first of many super soldiers
created through these experiments.
But a spy broke into the lab
and accidentally destroyed
the last vial of serum after killing
the sole scientist who
knew how to recreate it.
- We have won!
Soon there will be a million like.
- Never.
You and your accursed experiment
shall die within this room.
Down with democracy, down with freedom.
- [Scott] The only man who figured out
how to build super soldiers is dead.
But maybe he wasn't the only one.
- I'm E. Paul Zehr, and I'm a professor
of neuroscience at the
University of Victoria.
My day job is helping people
learn how to walk better
after they've had a stroke
or a spinal cord injury.
And kinda my nighttime work, my alter ego,
has been writing science
communication books
using super heroes.
- Professor Zehr has already
written a couple books
that explore pushing the
limits of human biology
to become Batman and
utilizing advancements
in technology to invent Iron Man,
but his latest book,
Chasing Captain America,
dives into the idea of
purposefully changing human biology
to perhaps transform us all into veritable
super humans akin to Steve Rogers.
So just how close are we to creating
a real-life super soldier serum?
Closer than you might think, honestly,
which is both fascinating and terrifying.
Eh, screw it.
Bottom's up!
(screams)
- [Man] Suddenly it is over
and America has a new champion.
(upbeat music)
- Oh, how are you doing,
you wonderful nerds?
Scott here.
And if we wanna build
ourselves a super soldier,
let's start with Cap's
most apparent trait,
them big, bulging muscles.
The dramatic physical change
from a scrawny boy to...
(triumphant music)
Believe it or not, this might actually be
the easiest thing to achieve on our list.
There's a protein in your
muscles called myostatin
that works to regulate the size
and number of your muscle cells.
They basically keep your muscle growth
from getting out of control.
So, what happens if
myostatin's muscle suppression
was toned down or turned off altogether?
We've seen naturally-occurring
mutations of this
in animals like the Belgian blue cattle
who are selectively bred to keep
this malfunctioning myostatin gene,
resulting in double-muscled cows.
They're also the victims of a
slew of other health problems
and clearly hate this but
hey, more meat more money.
Who needs ethics?
But the problem for our
use is that this mutation
is something that's bred into the cattle.
That's not gonna help us
much if we want to turn
a 90-pound Steve Rogers into...
(triumphant music)
We need a way to suppress
the myostatin gene
in people where it's
functioning correctly.
And there are a couple of different ways
that we can do this.
One idea led to an experiment
that created super strong monkeys.
- Monkeys?
I do not understand.
- I do!
I understood that reference.
- The critical thing here
about the super strong monkeys
is these folks in Ohio, they took monkeys
that weren't with the gene deletion.
They didn't look like steroid monkeys.
They looked like normal monkeys.
But what they did was they
put an injection that wound up
using an interaction of
another gene that regulates
something called follistatin
which interacts with myostatin.
So one's kind of like the gatekeeper,
and you can knock out the
one that affects the other.
And what they did was
they took the breaks off.
That regulation of the muscle
size is now knocked out
in those monkeys, and very
rapidly they got stronger.
20%, 30% increase in strength
is a lot when you think about
it's just happening pretty quickly
and you're not doing a
whole bunch of training.
Imagine putting the
training on top of that.
Imagine adding steroids to that
for really enhanced effects.
But the point was these
things actually work.
- [Scott] Another idea is to
use gene-editing technologies
like CRISPR which has been getting more
and more attention over the years.
- What is driving a lot of recent coverage
is something called CRISPR.
- CRISPR could help rid us of
diseases like cystic fibrosis,
muscular dystrophy, and
even HIV and cancer.
- [Narrator] The CRISPR
race that's underway
among scientists everywhere.
- [Scott] In a nutshell,
CRISPR is a precise
and programmable molecule
that can search out
and cut specific sequences from DNA.
From there, the strands can
be repaired by the body as is,
or a new sequence can be inserted
in place of what was cut.
Scientists in China have
already used CRISPR technology
to delete the myostatin gene in dogs
to create extra-muscular canines.
- And this was the proof of principle,
you could actually make
this happen on purpose,
which I use in the book to illustrate
here's the kind of power
we have at our fingertips,
literally now, to go in
and change what it means
to be a biologically functioning human,
to kind of change the range.
- You know, I was expecting super soldiers
to look more like rather
than lean more towards
the cuddly canine side of the spectrum,
but, no actually that does track.
Cap-Wolf is canon.
He's canon.
Obviously, we need to
study the long-term effects
of genetic manipulation more thoroughly,
and most countries have
a ban on experimenting
with human embryos, but most isn't all.
Technology pushes forward regardless,
so perhaps the best thing
we can do is try to use
these innovations intelligently,
which brings us to...
(gentle music)
Captain America is brilliant.
And I feel like that goes understated.
- And the sixth one was about here.
30-40 miles west of the maginot line.
I just got a quick look.
- Nobody's perfect.
- [Scott] He may not have
the same type of intellect
as Iron Man's depth of
knowledge regarding technology
and pop culture references,
but Cap is a master tactician
able to rapidly process information
in the heat of battle and
map the precise geometry
of each and every shield throw
which is a lot harder
than it sounds, trust me.
- That thing does not obey
the laws of physics at all.
- Look kid, there's a lot going on here
that you don't understand.
- [Scott] The original comics emphasized
the serum's effect on Steve's brain power
as much as his physical strength.
Quote, "Behold, the crowning achievement
"of my years of hard work!
"The first of a corps of super-agents
"whose mental and physical ability
"will make them a terror
to spies and saboteurs!"
End quote.
But how could we achieve this
mighty boost in mental power?
Well, some claim that Sudoku puzzles,
or Rubik's cubes, and
other brain training games
can help increase your intelligence
or at the very least
reduce cognitive decline,
but all they really do is make you better
at those specific puzzles and games.
It doesn't quite
translate to a brain boost
in the real world.
Nootropics or smart pills
may have mild effects
on brain performance, but
that could also be due
to the placebo effect, people
merely wanting these drugs
to work, so it feels like they do.
But I think if we're dissecting
a comic book superhero,
we need to discuss science
that's on that same level of fantastic.
A genuinely mind-blowing experiment.
- Yeah, this was one of
the most mind-blowing
experiments I've literally,
as a neuroscientist
and I've been doing neuroscience
for several decades,
yeah, this was interesting.
This group wanted to look at whether
they could enhance basically,
what we might call the
intelligence of mice.
Now, we know that there's
these cells in our brains
called microglia which people thought
that they were like
scaffolding or support cells
but in fact are really important
for physiological functioning.
In particular, they do
this thing with calcium.
And calcium ions, they
regulate at the speed
at which your neurons function.
In a human, those cells
work about three times
as fast as in the mouse.
- Wait, are you saying
I'm only three times
smarter than a rodent?
- That's not really what that means.
But it means these cells
are three times as fast,
which is a lot in biological terms.
- Heck yeah, it is!
Which is what made this
experiment so interesting!
Researchers surgically
engrafted glial cells
from a human brain onto
the brain of a mouse.
And we haven't even gotten
to the wild part yet.
The scientists wanted to
answer three questions.
- First of all, would it live there?
Second of all, would it do anything?
And lastly, how long would it work?
So they did a couple of
experiments over several years.
What they found was
they put these cells in,
put them into brain of the mouse
and then have a batch of mice
which had this kind of
chimeric enhancement
where they're now kind
of a multi-species thing
'cause they've got human tissue in them,
and then test them at all
these behavioral things
and find out whether the
mice that had the brain cells
from humans in them actually were smarter.
And, yeah, they were.
They totally crushed the other mice.
They were a lot faster at learning.
They retained things more.
They were just, they
were super smart mice.
- That is amazing!
These mice with human
brains showed roughly
a 10% increase in learning
and memory formation.
And I'm only slightly exaggerating
when I call them mice with human brains.
The engrafted human glial
cells not only survived
on these mice brains, but they thrived
to a genuinely alarming degree.
- This effect lasted for a long time.
And in fact, they did a couple
of follow-up experiments
where they found that even a year later,
not only were those cells still active,
but they'd been multiplying
and growing in the mouse brain.
They basically took over
that part of the brain
for memory enhancement and formation.
That was not expected.
- I feel like that needs to be restated.
These transplanted human brain cells
took over the mouse brain,
making them measurably smarter.
I mean, forget about Captain America.
This is the recipe to
create Rocket Raccoon.
- Ain't no thing like me 'cept me!
- The element that brings together
Cap's physical strength and
his mental prowess is this.
Captain America is a
pretty skilled fighter,
to say the least.
And although we never really
see him train that much
in the MCU, we know that he had
extensive training in the comics.
In issue six of The Avengers,
Cap is squaring off against Baron Zemo
who attempts to show off
his newfound karate skills.
Unimpressed, Captain America says quote,
"It's too bad your skill
doesn't match your words,
"you arrogant killer!
"This is no innocent victim of
tyranny you"re taunting now!
"This is Captain America!
"I was adept at every form
of hand-to-hand combat
"known to man while you were
still safe in your laboratory,
"serving your Nazi masters!
"Where is your braggadocio,
now, master of evil?"
This speech tells us two things.
Number one, holy cow, Stan Lee
could write powerful dialogue,
and number two, Cap
somehow managed to master
every type of close combat
that has ever existed
which even for him would
take many years of training
that we never see him do.
In most tellings of Cap's origin,
Steve Rogers undergoes the
super soldier experiment
and then bam, he's got a
pretty good grasp on things.
(glass shatters)
I said pretty good grasp!
The point is it seems like Captain America
kinda skipped over years of training
that he'd need to get to this
level of fighting expertise.
Or perhaps he took a shortcut,
having extensive combat training uploaded
directly into his brain.
In a wild study, researchers
had implanted rats
with a tiny array of electrodes
threaded in a structure of the brain
that's critical for forming new memories.
They had these rats
perform a behavioral task
that required memorization
while the implant recorded
and transmitted the neuron firing pattern
of their brains to a computer.
This memory content from
the trained donor rat
was then decoded and
effectively transferred
to a recipient rat by
electrically stimulating
its implant with the recorded
pattern from the donor.
Okay so, in essence, they
trained a rat to do a task,
recorded its brain pattern
while doing said task,
and then uploaded that pattern into a rat
that never had any training.
What the researchers
found was that the rats
who received this memory
transfer performed the task
that again, it was never trained to do,
better than the rats who didn't
receive the memory transfer.
They still performed a little worse
than the rats who were
actually trained of course,
but this, as a proof of
concept, is very interesting.
The study concludes
quote, "Once fabricated
"into a neural prosthesis for recipients
"this unique technology could one,
"immediately enhance
task-specific performance,
"two, repair damaged or
impaired task-dependent
"brain circuitry, and possibly even,
"three, provide neural encoding
of task-relevant information
"without prior training," end quote.
This could be how Captain America
became a skilled fighter
almost immediately
without much training.
Just download some kung-fu
directly into your brain
to fight Hugo Weaving, hey, wait a minute!
So, it seems like we
kinda have a rough outline
for how we would realistically create
someone like Captain America.
But I'm gonna be real
honest with you guys.
When I started writing this video,
I thought I would follow the same path
I'd taken in previous science videos
where I talk about some wacky experiments,
say how neat, and call it a day.
That's kinda what I did two years ago
when I already talked about
how to make super soldiers,
what, no, this is a brand new topic!
I'm not recycling ideas.
But this time, things
are a little different.
When we discuss whether or not Superman
could reverse the Earth's
rotation by flying around it,
or if Captain Cold could
use freezing temperatures
to trick the Flash into
hallucinating weird monsters,
we're not doing so in a world
where there's an imminent threat
of those things happening, you know?
But experiments and innovations
that will push the limits
of human biology are happening now.
Like, right now.
Remember earlier when I said,
most countries have a ban on experimenting
with human embryos, but most isn't all.
Technology pushes forward regardless.
That was me cleverly setting
up this section of the video.
We need to start having real, honest,
genuine conversations about this stuff.
As we become more knowledgeable,
as technology rockets forward,
Zehr worries that quote, "We
have also become less patient.
"We are hurtling forward at a full sprint
"toward a future we think
we can control," end quote.
It would be extremely beneficial
to stop and catch our breath
so we can try to have a
conversation about the future
of our species, but technology
isn't gonna wait for us.
- These things are going to happen.
I'm not saying even necessarily
that they must happen
but they will because
that's the way things work.
- A 1922 paper titled
Are Inventions Inevitable
by Ogburn and Thomas
outlined 148 significant
scientific discoveries
that were thought up
by multiple people simultaneously,
yet independently from one another.
For example, there were at
least six different people
who invented the thermometer
within a few years of each other,
nine or so who invented the telescope,
a few who came up with
the idea for typewriters
around the same time, and
five different inventors
of the steamboat who all thought
they were super original.
And that's just the beginning.
The paper goes on for ages
listing significant innovations
and discoveries from
fields like astronomy,
mathematics, chemistry, physics,
biology, and psychology,
all of which showcase this phenomenon
of multiple independent discovery.
Like pieces on a chessboard,
there are only so many
possible moves forward
at any given stage of the game,
so of course different people will end up
making the same plays.
And some believe this
phenomenon demonstrates
how specific technologies
are just gonna happen.
As the title of the paper
provokes all the way back in 1922,
certain discoveries and inventions
might just be inevitable.
Perhaps enhancing human
biology through gene editing
or other technologies like we've explored
is one of those inevitabilities.
Something whose creation
is out of our control.
But what we can control is the environment
in which we use them.
You, me, all of us, we get to choose
whether or not we create Captain America.
But we have to be paying attention,
and we have to talk about it.
If we want to create
the Star-Spangled Man,
we should, at least, have a plan.
- I gotta admit, too often
in science, stuff happens,
then we think about what it means after.
I want people thinking
about this in advance
of when it actually is a
full procedure available
because we need to plan in advance.
This is our societies around the world,
this is our world, this is our species.
We all have a take in
this and a stake in it.
- When Captain America was first created
back in the 1940s, I doubt his creators,
Joe Simon and Jack
Kirby, could've predicted
the scientific breakthroughs
that could potentially
give way to a real life Steve Rogers.
The imaginative science-fiction
that made Marvel Comics
enchanting and fantastic
is edging closer and closer to reality.
Someday, a product of their imagination
might be staring us in the
face, proving that the man
out of time was conjured up
by men ahead of their time.
(upbeat music)
I wanna give a huge thanks
to Professor E. Paul Zehr
for helping out with this video.
Make sure you check out
Chasing Captain America
for a ton more information
and incredible stories
of scientists attempting
to change human biology
to be more like the Sentinel of Liberty.
I uploaded our full 20-minute conversation
to the NerdSync Patreon page,
if you wanna listen to that.
And also, I mean it when I say
that we should talk more about this stuff.
Write a comment about your
thoughts on this subject.
Reply to somebody else's comment.
You'll have plenty of time
to write everything out
as I awkwardly stumble
(grunts) perfect example.
You'll have plenty of time
to write everything out
as I awkwardly stumble into the
this week's sponsor segment.
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Nailed that segue.
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Plus, you'll be supporting the show.
So once again that's
DollarShaveClub.com/NerdSync.
As always, I wanna thank our Patrons
for supporting these videos that we make.
But, and this is really awkward,
I forgot that I rearranged
all my reward tiers
a few months ago, and I
should have been thanking
a lot more people here during the outro.
So, thank you, and apologies
to Cristoffer Lange,
Everett Parrott, Sonali
Manka, Ariella Kelley,
Dave Weston, Devin Gosselin, Luis Orozco,
Matias Tironi, Ryan Reed, Shawn Griffin,
Bart Labeda, David H. Adler, David Holley,
Jamie Price, John Gordon
Nightingale II, what a cool name,
Johnathan Amrein, Jonathan Lonowski,
Matt Valentin, Matthew
Jeanos, Natalie Englund,
Nathaniel Naranjo, and Zach Van Stanley.
I am so sorry that I kept forgetting
to say all of your names,
and I cannot believe
that none of you brought it up!
Now I'm just kidding, you all are great.
And if you want your name here
on this ever-growing
wall of beautiful people,
and you want me to mispronounce
your name terribly,
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Thanks for watching.
My name is Scott reminding you to read
between the panels and grow
smarter through comics.
See ya!
