The Science Behind The X-Files:

Leonard Betts

• This episode begins with a decapitated body breaking out from a morgue locker and walking away. Is this unheard of in nature? Nope. Cockroaches can live for about a week after they lose their head. Apparently the only reason that they die after this long is from dehydration; they have no way of drinking water!
  
  For other interesting facts about the amazing cockroach, check out http://www.nj.com/yucky/facts/, a page of Roach Facts from New Jersey Online's Cockroach World.

• Mulder and Scully find Leonard Betts' decapitated head disposed in a watery tank of biological waste. Scully explains that the organic waste will be sterilized with microwaves and ground up for safe and easy disposal. Yes, believe it or not, this is an actual process. The technologies and procedures for microwave incineration were developed at NASA's Ames Research Center, and as far as I know, are not yet in widespread use.
  
  For more information on microwave incineration of biological waste, go to http://ctoserver.arc.nasa.gov/TechOpps/micro.html, a page from the Ames Research Center.

• While Mulder decides to search for clues in Leonard Betts' apartment, Scully prepares the head for autopsy. She decides to postpone cutting when the head opens it's eyes, blinks, and opens its mouth. She calls it "post-mortem galvanic response," but similar occurrences in lizard decapitations have also been so misconstrued. When a reptile is decapitated, its head may try to bite things placed in range, and its eyes will focus on different objects, usually for quite some time after losing its body.
  
  To read about why decapitation is not a good form of reptile euthanasia, read Melissa Kaplan's herpetological warning at http://www.sonic.net/~melissk/decap.html.

• Scully is a little shaken by the autopsy attempt, so she has the head coated in a clear resin that will allow her to cut it into very thin cross-sections for analysis. The agents take one of these "slices" down to a doctor practicing Kirlian photography. Kirlian photography captures on film the electrical "corona discharge" that occurs when an object attached to a Tesla coil is placed on photographic film. "New Age" practitioners of pseudoscience have asserted that this natural phenomenon is actually the "life force" of the object, manifesting itself as an "aura," but it's just a simple property of the combination electricity and photography. (I've looked around quite a bit, but I still haven't found any conclusive evidence that the "phantom leaf" phenomenon ever occurs, for that matter....)
  
  To learn about the Visible Human project, an ambitious undertaking to digitize the anatomy of two cadavers, one 1mm-thick section at a time, check out http://www.madsci.org/~lynn/VH/.
  For more information on Kirlian photography, go to http://www.gentech.com/~employee/david/skeptic/kirlian.htm, or go see what the Mad Scientist Network had to say about it at http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/may97/863469514.Ot.r.html.

• While the two agents investigate the circumstances surrounding Betts' bad habit of dying multiple times, his old EMS partner finds out that he's still alive. When she confronts him, he injects here with a lethal dose of potassium chloride. Potassium chloride (KCl), as Scully notes, is an electrolyte that occurs naturally in the body, and medically is used in regulated doses to treat potassium and electrolyte depletion such as severe dehydration. However, in large doses, KCl can induce hyperkalemia and cardiac arrest. (I even read in the news that KCl is used in lethal injections for the death penalty in some states.)
  
  Hyperkalemia link: http://www.healthanswers.com/database/ami/converted/001179.html
  For more information on slow-release, low-dosage potassium chloride, as administered in hospitals, check out http://www.rxlist.com/cgi/generic/kclsr.htm.

• Mulder eventually hypothesizes that Leonard Betts is the next link in the chain of evolution. Citing Harvard geologist Stephen J. Gould's theory of "punctuated equilibrium" or "punctualism," Mulder explains that evolution may not occur gradually, as once assumed, but rather in dramatic spurts caused by extravagant mutations.
  
  Gould's book Full House: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0609801406/o/ref=qid_900862658/002-7742672-7989264
  For more information on punctual equilibrium, read a dissection of a Creationist treatise against the theory at http://aix2.uottawa.ca/~s866370/creation.html.

• Betts, as Mulder supposes, is virtually a living cancer; an organism that can regenerate limbs (and even molt) much like lizards and needs to consume cancerous cells to fuel the regeneration process. Every cell in his body has activated oncogenes, to the point where his cellular structure is metastasizing. In this case, metastasizing means that his cancerous cells have, for all rights, permeated his body. It must have taken one (un)lucky roll of the dice to give old Leonard the genetic makeup that he's got; oncogenes, the genes that make cells cancerous, are often prevented from developing by tumor suppressor and excision repair genes in each cell. Thus, for cancer to occur in just one cell, three different genes must malfunction simultaneously. (Special thanks to my biology major college roommate for all his help on this one!!)
  
  For more information on how lizards regenerate limbs, look at http://www.basilisk.com/B/biomorphic_regeneratio_252.html.
  To learn more about oncogenes and cancer, check out http://www.hoag.org/BiologyofCancer.html.
  

• Cancer kills well over 34 million people each year in the United States alone.
  You may want to make a stop by the American Cancer Society's home page to learn more about cancer and what you can do to help in the fight against the disease.
  
  American Cancer Society site: http://www.cancer.org/