Yasmin: The Barrier Breaker

First they said it wasn't important to study opioid addiction. Then they said it wasn't possible to do it her way. Hear how Yasmin Hurd, PhD, learned to tune out the noise and take control.

Links:

• Addiction Institute at Mount Sinai - https://bit.ly/2Ic9vfB
• Hurd Laboratory - http://labs.neuroscience.mssm.edu/project/hurd-lab/
• "Addressing racism and disparities in the biomedical sciences" (article in Nature Human Behavior) - https://go.nature.com/3osFyau

Episode Transcript

DR. YASMIN HURD (00:00):
This is a letter from a more senior person
in our society.
So she writes,"Thank you somuch.
I'm 73 years old and have neverexperienced anything like this.
I've never had a problem withdrinking or drugs, so this has
been very depressing for me todeal with.
My doctor put me on Norco, whichis hydrocodone, for

(00:20):
fibromyalgia.
And he gave me more and moreuntil I developed a problem.
Now I'm on Suboxone and I wantto try to use CBD to wean off
Suboxone.
I just don't know how do weanoff.
Please, please send me a reply.
I'm praying you have asuggestion for me." I receive

(00:45):
letters, phone calls practicallyevery day from many people and
their families suffering fromaddiction disorders.
Receiving a letter like this, itreminds me that the work we do
is very important and it justhelps me to refocus every day on
the reality of this devastatingdisorder, that it impacts on

(01:06):
everybody from the babies thatwe do work with to this
73-year-old woman.
The opioid epidemic is extremelyreal, and I don't think that
most Americans understand it.
Within an hour about six peoplewill die from opioid overdose.

(01:27):
Have we gotten a little betterin the past year?
Yes, but when you're stillhaving nearly 50,000 people die
a year, that's still horrendous,horrendous.
I'm Yasmin Hurd.
I'm the Director of theAddiction Institute at the Icahn

(01:48):
School of Medicine at MountSinai in New York.
I was a weird kid.
I was born in Jamaica, came toNew York and I became an even
more unusual kid here because Iwas a black girl that liked
science.
I even loved Einstein who looksnothing like me, sounds nothing
like me.
And at every stage of myeducation here there were many

(02:10):
challenges and buffers pushedagainst you so that, you know,
you'll hear all these thingsgoing around,"Oh, this person
shouldn't be here.
That shouldn't be—you don't havethe capacity to learn math
because you're a girl." Becauseyou keep hearing in society of
all these little things.
And that's one of the things forme.
My mom was like,"You gotta letgo of noise.

(02:31):
It's a distraction." And so forme I think that that's one thing
I really appreciated about mymom.

COMMERCIAL (02:43):
I don't know when I was first captured by the
enchantment of the midnight sun.
But it must've been this Swedishpamphlet which turned
enchantment into obsession.
I had to see it for myself.

DR. YASMIN HURD (02:55):
Living in Sweden and being a scientist in
Sweden, I think, helped me to bewhere I am today.
I was not blond-haired,blue-eyed.
It was very weird the first timeI went there, I was like,"Wow,
Twilight Zone! Everybody looksthe same." And when I went to
Sweden it was the first time itfelt so incredible that no one
really cared that I was a blackgirl liking science.

(03:17):
They cared that I was American,and therefore as American I must
be the best.
And so having to live up tosomething raises you, than if
you have to always push off thenegative that no one expects you
to be in this particularprofession.
My first autopsy case of aperson with a heroin addiction
was a young man called George.

(03:40):
They had found him in abathroom, in a train station.
And I walked into the autopsyroom—big room, cold metal
table—and this young man islaying there and he doesn't look
like an opioid-addicted personto me.
At that time people weren'treally doing tattoos, but people
who were hardcore drug abuserswere tattooed up the wazoo.

(04:03):
Everything about him was just"normal-looking" except for his
needle track marks.
And I realized then that I wasprejudiced myself.
I had biases of what anopioid-addicted person would
look like.
If our research succeeds, wewill contribute to developing a

(04:24):
much larger medication toolkitfor treatments for people with
substance use disorders.
Most of the things that I'vestudied, many people told me
were not important to study orthat it was not possible to
study.
So when we were doing molecularstudies of the postmortem human

(04:45):
brain, everyone was like,"Oh,they're dead.
So all of the things you'restudying—the genes and so on—are
not relevant.
They're not real.
They're artifacts." And noweveryone starts to study the
human brain in that way becauseto realize that, yes, it gives
us the most direct evidence ofwhat is happening on a molecular

(05:08):
level.
I don't know if there's onefinding that I'm particularly
proud of.
I think there are so many thathave provided insights that have
led us to the potential todevelop new medications.
So for example, we studiedcannabidiol, CBD, and we saw
that it actually reducedheroin-seeking behavior.
And that has the potential to beused as a treatment for opioid

(05:31):
addiction.
The biggest challenges weface—resources.
Addiction is not well-fundedbecause there's a stigma of
addiction where people think,"Oh, this person brought it on
themselves.
They must have low morals." Andit's not a choice that people
have.
It may initially start that way.
But once addiction comes in,it's not a choice.

(05:56):
I have only one sticky on mycomputer.
And I had written early in mycareer—so it's old—"gain
control." And I actually crossedout"gain" into"take" control.
I think we all sometimes are toopassive about our life.

(06:18):
And it just reminds meperiodically when I look on that
sticky that we actually controlmany of the things daily.
And so it's important to takecontrol of the things you want.
Take control, be more proactive.
I want people and especially, Ithink, students and junior
faculty to know that the workthey do, the training they're

(06:40):
doing, is really critical.
And if you focus on the peopleafflicted by these disorders,
it's easy to get through thechallenges the day.
Crazy! Now I have a Wikipediapage.
One of my friends told me,"Doyou know you're in—," and I'm
like,"Really?!"