when a cemetery disappears, what is lost? >> history. >> history. a cemetery is supposed to be your final resting place. >> an honorable place. >> final. >> in clearwater, florida, they're debating how to honor the dead. now entombed beneath a school, missouri avenue, and an office complex, an enduring legacy of segregation. >> tear down that building as far as i'm concerned. tonight let's be thankful for our dogs and take a trip through human and canine

evolution. how are wolves and man's best friend alike? that was so cool. you'll be surprised at what we found out. >> can i see your face? >> as well as the remarkable ways that dogs are helping scientists research some of the deadliest kinds of cancer. it's so amazing to me how similar humans and dogs immune response is. >> we're very similar. you know, i think perhaps more so than we might like to admit. >> i'm lesley stahl. >> i'm bill whitaker. >> i'm anderson cooper. >> i'm sharyn alfonsi. >> i'm john wertheim. >> i'm scott pelley. >> those stories and more tonight on "60 minutes."

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no one can say when human remains began surfacing in clearwater, florida. there was the pipeline crew that churned up bones in a trench. later, remains were found at an elementary school, a swimming pool, and an office building. it seemed like a curse for what had been done in the name of progress and greed in the old segregated south. the truth of what happened in the '40s and '50s was meant to stay buried. but in a neighborhood called clearwater heights, residents with long memories recognized a grave injustice. in the first half of the 20th

century clearwater heights was a black neighborhood thriving, proud, and anchored by faith. >> friendship missionary baptist church, bethany cme, and new zion missionary baptist church were all located on the heights. >> and so is st. matthews baptist where we heard stories of childhood in the heights including those of diane stevens and eleanor breland. >> they had businesses, barbershops. there were hair dressers over there. there was a cab company. only had one cab, but it was still a cab company. >> right there on greenwood they had different places where even ray charles performed there. also james brown performed up there. >> but even the famous could not stay in a white clearwater hotel or walk on the beach or swim in the bay.

segregation bound their lives and exiled even their memory to segregated graveyards. how many of you believe you have ancestors in one of these cemeteries? about half of you. the segreg clearwater were sacred ground until the ground became valuable. in the 1950s headlines announced that the city of clearwater made a deal on moving a negro cemetery. hundreds of african american bodies were to be reburied to make way for a swimming pool. a department store was planned for the site of another black cemetery where, again, the bodies were to be moved. but o'neal larkin remembers many years later his first revelation that something was terribly wrong. >> it's not an imaginary thing i seen. it's what i seen with my own eyes.

>> larkin, 82 years old, watched a construction crew in 1984 dig a trench through the site of a "relocated" black cemetery. >> but i remember the parking lot where the engineer was cutting the lines through and they cut through two coffins. that was my first knowledge of seeing it because i walked out there and i seen it myself. >> in 2019 the "tampa bay times" reported many segregated cemeteries in florida had been essentially paved. it was then that the modern city of clearwater decided to exhume the truth. >> people deserve to be treated with respect. that's the most important thing. >> rebecca o'sullivan and erin mckendry are archaeologists for a company. the company was hired by the

city to map the desecration. >> these were individuals who were loved. they were family members, they were fathers and mothers, and they were interred with love. penetrating radar over a segregated cemetery where this office site stands today. this overlay shows part of their discovery. 328 likely graves, many under the parking lot, perhaps a few under the building, and more there on the right beneath south missouri avenue. 550 graves are in the cemetery's record. mckendry and o'sullivan found evidence of 11 having been moved in the 1950s. so there may be hundreds of bodies still at that site? >> it's possible. >> not far away the archaeologists probed another former cemetery. >> where there's more looks like intact.

>> here in the 1950s rather than integrate the white community pool, the city said it would move hundreds of bodies to build a black swimming pool and a black school. but the bodies weren't removed. >> but the bodies were not removed. >> kardino found the proof last year. it excavated just deep enough to confirm what ground penetrating radar had suggested. a prayer was said over the site, then they planed the sand and sieved a century of time in search of grave markers or tributes. inevitably relics including human remains, teeth at the office building site, and bones at the school, which had closed in 2008 because it was obsolete.

are their grave sites underneath the school? >> all the information and data we collected does indicate there are additional burials likely below the footprint of that school building. >> i would be very surprised if they didn't find any bones. >> o'neil larkin watched the excavation and imagined the groundbreaking at the school construction site in 1961. >> to dig the foundation to put this school upon, they had to hit some form of remains. >> it's likely some families could not afford a tombstone, but the archaeologists found graves were marked. >> this is a marker that would have been used initially after the burial if the stone was not ready to be placed, and in some cases this is all that would have been used to mark the location of a burial. >> erin mckendry shows us the

>> it's a mercury dime. >> it is a mercury dime. >> this dime new in '42 was among many tributes left with the dead. >> we also found this brass wedding ring at approximately the same location and same depth as the dime. >> the tributes and disturbed human remains were carefully reburied exactly where they were found pending a decision on what to do next. if you could speak to these people who are interred and then lost, what would you tell them? >> i hear you. i'm working. i want to recognize the contributions, the life you lived. i recognize and see your humanity. the cheapest land, the worst places. >> anthropologist antoinette jackson leads the african american burial ground project at the university of south florida. she's building a database of

desecrated cemeteries. >> not just clearwater it's nationally from new york all the way out towards texas and all the way down to south florida where these cemeteries have been built over erased, marginalized, underfunded, and need support in order to make them whole and have this history known. this is not an isolated story, unfortunately. >> so far jackson has listed about cemeteries nationwide. under housing, freeways, and the county owned parking lot of tropicana field, home to baseball's tampa bay rays. >> what we want to bring forward is the memory, the knowledge that these sites were there. these places, these cemeteries, these families were there, lived, died, worked, contributed to our country, to their communities, to our hometowns. >> is there evidence of white cemeteries being lost, abandoned, forgotten in the way that these are?

>> there are abandoned cemeteries across the board. there are cemeteries that are not only african american cemeteries or black cemeteries that have been in some way desecrated. but the issue is more acute with black cemeteries because of issues like slavery, segregation in which this particular community were legally and intentionally considered lesser than or marginalized by law. >> when a cemetery disappears, what is lost? >> history. >> history. >> history. >> respect. a great deal of respect because you can no longer visit and bring closure to your own soul. >> a cemetery is supposed to be your final resting place. >> honorable place. >> final. >> in clearwater they're debating how to honor those entombed beneath the school, south missouri avenue, and the

property of the frank crumb company, which bought its headquarters for its staffing business decades after the cemetery was erased. >> i'm sure that when they purchased that property they didn't know that there were bodies there. >> atkinson heads the clearwater naacp. what would you say to someone who might make the argument that disturbing missouri avenue, disturbing the frank crumb corporation, disturbing the schools, way too much effort at this point in time? >> i would say that's not their call. they have no family buried there. >> he's helping lead the conversation of what to do now among descendants, businesses, and the city. >> some people want to have the bodies moved to a place where they can properly memorialize them. some of the community wants to let the people stay where they are. those are the type of things

that need to be worked out. >> how do you work them out? >> we have to sit and talk about it. was deceit, incompetence or ero indifference we do not know, but today clearwater is spending $270,000 to learn the truth. the city told us it is searching for a compromise that will honor the dead. the frank crumb company told us it wants to be part of the community solution. ideas include monuments, but for a few like o'neil larkin there's only one route to justice. >> tear it down. >> tear the building down. >> tear it down. tear down that building as far as i'm concerned. tear the school down. make a shrine of memories

that people can go and use it in a proper way of remembering to treat them with more dignity than what this has been treated. >> we noticed dignity was treated gently in the white cemeteries of clearwater. in this one we found a monument to a confederate soldier. his grave decorated today with a fresh banner of racism. but when this confederate sacred ground found itself blocking the road to progress, the small cemetery under those trees in the middle was granted a reverent circular detour. of those citizens buried in the black cemeteries of clearwater we have images of only these. the reverend arthur l. jackson, the reverend joseph hines, and mack dickson sr. who was buried beside his wife florence, three children, and two grandchildren. we do not know the faces of 500 more who remain forever bound by

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there's a good chance that many of you watching right now have a dog somewhere nearby, but what do you actually know about where dogs come from? you're probably aware they evolved from wolves, but how and when? it turns out much of that is still a mystery. there are some intriguing clues, however, that have been discovered in the dna of dogs and wolves. clues that just might give us a better understanding of how they and we evolve. you heard the survival of the fittest, but a scientist at duke university says the term that may best describe dog's evolutionary success is survival of the friendliest. there's no doubt dogs are an

evolutionary triumph. there's an estimated billion of them on the planet and they've nosed their way into every corner of our lives, living with us, working with us. >> yes, good boy. >> and loving us. what is it you're trying to understand about dogs? >> i'm really interested in where dogs come from, and i think it teaches us a lot about where humans came from. >> ryan hare, an evolutionary biologist and author at duke university has spent the last 25 years studying animal evolution. >> i think what really summarizes the link between dog and human evolution is survival of the friendliest. >> what about survival of the fittest? >> so survival of the fittest is a misconstrual really in the public mind of what evolution is. it's like the idea of the biggest, the strongest always win. >> might makes right. >> yeah, but not at all. and dogs are exhibit a of this. >> he says it's hard to imagine but that sweet dog you love

started out as this. a wild, predatory wolf. and their evolutionary story began at least 20,000 years ago when humans were hunter gatherers. >> so what we believe happened, and we have science to show some of this, is that wolves chose us. a population of wolves actually became attracted to humans, and they were at an advantage because they were eating garbage, things people were leaving around home. and the wolves that sort of basically gave up on being wolf again, hunting and were attracted towards humans. they were at a huge advantage. >> some wolves were able to feed off scraps, they weren't aggressive. and over time they became domesticated. >> that's exactly right. >> to better understand how the two species diverged so drastically brian hare came here to the wildlife center in minnesota. it's run by director peggy

callahan and her 23-year-old daughter, may. both skilled we saw at navigating a cage full of hungry wolves. >> back up. >> i know you're hungry. don't get pissed at me. this is only going as far as it's going. >> you might want to just hand it over. >> there are 110 gray wolves here. some were rescued from the wild, but most were hand raised by peggy and may. they're divided into packs, separated by chain-link fences. this pack is named after the '80s horror movie "children of the corn." so i saw the movie "children of the corn," which is terrifying. why is this pack called children of the corn? >> for terrifying reasons. they attacked and killed their father and then tried to kill their mother. this pack. >> why did they kill their father? >> opportunity. >> opportunity? wow. >> hi. you came here to see me. >> peggy told us the only reason we were able to sit among the children of the corn is because these wolves view her as the dominant member of their pack.

why is it important that in their minds you are dominant to them? >> the reverse is quite dangerous. i know they're capable of killing one another. their teeth are -- their jaw pressure is enormous. >> by the way, even right now with the wolves coming up behind you, you're aware they're behind you. >> yes. you have to have eyes on the back of your head. >> they're assessing who's dominant, can i take this person. >> absolutely. hi. i don't think they're planning anything, but i think should an opportunity afford, they're incredible opportunists. >> peggy works hard to secure the upper hand. if you have any doubt about her position as the alpha dog, just listen. can you show me your howl? >> absolutely.

>> goose bumps every time. >> and that was so cool. >> so wouldn't you learn to howl if that happened? >> what is the significance of the howl? >> they use it to mark territory. they also will howl at intruders to get them to leave. >> becoming dominant over a wolf if a pup needs to be taken away from its mother for health or research purposes, meg steps in. >> i told you i'd bring a wolf puppy to visit. >> when we were there with her and may, she was taking 1-month old philo everywhere even to a coffee run. >> sometimes if he gets mouthy like that. it's a little correction. i pinch and i growl, and the second he stops growling, oh, i whine to him and rub his belly and stuff. >> that's what his mother would do? >> exactly, yep. i'm sorry.

there's some wolf that looked just like that was back talking me there, not you. >> but don't be fooled, dominance has its limits. this is mj. this is the dominant female? >> yes. >> she was also hand raised and likes a belly rub, too. that is until she doesn't. >> she's tolerating this. she's done. okay, enough. she just said stop. >> i heard. to see just how far dogs have evolved because of domestication at duke university brian hare has setup a puppy kindergarten. students help raise labrador puppies. they tag along cruising the quad, going to basketball practice, even the track team's photo shoot. part of the program is aimed at training service dogs for the organization canine companions, but there's research being done,

too, to compare the puppies to hand raised wolf pups brian hare's team runs them through a series of behavioral tests. >> puppy, look. look. okay. yes, good job! >> watch again. >> puppy, look. >> notice how this puppy looks back and forth from the researcher to the bowl and then immediately follows her point. philo the wolf puppy might look like a dog but watch him taking the same test. >> puppy, look. okay. okay, baby. >> so you can see philo didn't follow a point here. >> but a puppy this age would? >> totally. exactly. it looks like dog puppies come into the world prepared to understand us in a way that wolf puppies are not because of domestication and interaction with us. >> you've done testing of wolves.

overall what have you found? >> so you can spend 24 hours a day with say a wolf puppy, and even after you've done that for several months, they're not attracted to new people. they don't want to be with people. they want to be with wolves. that's not what happens in the case of dogs. as a species they're actually wants known as xenophilic. they're attracted to new things and new people. >> but how much of that is in their genes? back in 2010 to figure that out hare's colleague, a geneticist at princeton started comparing the dna of dogs to wolves. you've located some specific genes that lead to friendly behavior? >> that's right. when we sequenced a bunch of dogs and a bunch of wolves we use that to then search for mutations in the dog genome that only dogs had, and we came out with really nice hot spot of mutations on chromosome number 6 in the dog genome, and that's what's highlighted here. >> you can actually pinpoint genetic mutations in dogs that

make that dog friendly to humans in a way that wolves are not? >> absolutely. >> wow. >> this was a major finding in my opinion. >> and that is something that would have evolved over time? >> that's right. we caagban the e-dog a whthe we wolvesunniround me making tir human settlements. i hypothesize that if i could go and sequence those wolves, that they would carry maybe two of these mutations, and the rest of the wolves, maybe none. >> she calls these friendliness mutations. so does my dog really love me, or is my dog acting out on its genetic code? >> she absolutely loves you. she has the genetic predisposition to wholeheartedly love you more man you can handle. >> what came next in her research stunned her and us.

she found the location of the friendly mutation in dogs corresponds to the same genes when deleted in humans causes a rare condition called william syndrome. her study established one of the first genetic links in behavior between dogs and humans. meet 36-year-old ben. >> how are you, sir? >> i'm well. how are you, sir? >> what a surprise. >> ben is no stranger to "60 minutes". when he was 11 in 1997 morley safer met him doing a story on williams syndrome. >> how are you? >> people with williams syndrome like ben are usually outgoing and friendly leaving some to call it cocktail personality. we were with ben in his favorite pub when he jumped up mid-dinner to join the band. ♪

>> what is it that makes you unique? >> what makes me unique is my way of giving happiness to people, my friendliness, my kindness. >> i've got to say just meeting you, you made me smile from the moment we met. >> when people are happy it feels like i've achieved someg. >> ws a lifelong condition that often causes physical problems and intellectual disabilities. ben's mom says others like him are so trusting and friendly they can sometimes be taken advantage of. just explain what is different about ben genetically. >> sure. ben is missing 25 genes on chromosome 7, and all those genes line up. that's one tenth of 1% of their genetic make-up is missing. >> that deletion in ben's dna and others with williams syndrome has the same gene with the friendliness mutation discovered in dogs. >> what do you think there might be a link of friendliness in dogs and might be a link to

friendliness in humans? >> it makes me feel so happy and proud that dogs and people have similarities. >> when the discovery was announced in 2017 terry was head of the williams syndrome association. she reached out to some members to see how they felt about it. >> and one of the parents that i called said are you kidding? and, you know, i'm sure that if a tail was put on my son it would be wagging all the time. and i think that really put it into perspective. >> understanding why dogs are so friendly, brian hare tells us, is helping unravel the mystery how homosapiens came to be the dominant species on earth. what does our understanding of dog evolution tell us about human evolution? >> i think what dog evolution teaches us is actually how you get ahead in the game of life you evolve a new way to be friendly that leads to a new form of cooperation. humans 100,000 years ago our species was not alone.

there were at least four to five other human species. and the question then becomes, well, why are we the only one left? and we think and what dogs point to is that we were the friendliest species that ever evolved among humans and that we survived because we are friendly. >> survival of the friendliest, a successful evolutionary strategy many humans today would be wise to remember. when we come back see how the genetic ties between dogs and humans may help us both in the fight against cancer. >> how friendly is anderson cooper's dog, lily? go to 60minutesovertime.com. sponsored by pfizer. peaceful state. full plate. wait, are you my blind date? dancing crew. trip for two. nail the final interview. buy or lease?

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if you've ever lost a dog to disease it may well have been cancer. some 4 million dogs in the u.s. are diagnosed with it every year, often the same kinds of cancers humans get. we share many of the same genes with our canine companions and for cancer research that's an opportunity scientists are trying to make the most of. it's called comparative oncology now funded in part by the cancer moon shot initiative doctors and scientists are studying naturally developing cancers mostly in dogs and using what they learn to speed potential treatments to them and us. a dog show might seem like an

odd place to conduct cancer research -- >> can i see your face? >> -- but this summer in norwalk, connecticut, that's where we met scientists at the national institute of health swabbing and collecting dna samples from all sorts of breeds. they've been doing this for nearly 30 years and have collecteou. dog . >> leading the team is a senior geneticist at the nih. >> i always thought the national institutes of health study human diseases. why is there a scientist at the nih studying dogs? >> we are studying human disease and we're doing it through dogs. and so dogs live in our world. they get all the same diseases we do, eat our food, expose to the same environmental pollutants, but they also have all the same genes we do, and they have mutations in those genes that make them susceptible to everything you and i get whether it's diabetes or cancer or neuro muscular diseases. everything humans get, dogs get.

>> she says it's easier to study genes in dogs than humans because for the last 200 years they've been bred to emphasize specific traits. that's why they have these distinct noses and tails and sizes from great danes to chihuahuas. >> there was some variation we know that from fossil records but almost all the variation you see running around the ring today all happened within the last 200 years. that means there's probably going to be a small number of genes responsible for most of the major differences. >> turns out just one gene determines if a dog has cream colored hair or black. other genes determine long hair or short. a team at the nih has discovered some physical traits in dogs like ear position hold surprising clues about human health. >> this was a study looking at tick ears versus floppy ears. and that's due to a mutations in

one gene called msrb3. >> so just a mutation in one gene makes the difference between pointy ears and floppy. >> isn't that amazing? but what's really interesting about this story is that when this gene is perturbed or more dramatically mutated in humans we get a form of deafness. >> really? >> yeah. >> she told us some of the most promising genetic research in dogs involves cancer. some breeds get certain types of cancers more often making it easier for researchers to locate some of the genes responsible. scottish terriers, for instance, are about 20 times more likely to get bladder cancer than the average mixed breed dog. >> if i were to look at a group of humans with bladder cancer the story would be so much more complex. there'd be different genes, in different populations, different mutations and different contributions of environmental effects. so when i look at one breed i get a much simpler story. >> dogs are diagnosed with many of the same cancers found in humans, lymphoma, melanoma,

brain and breast cancer and the deadly bone cancer, osteosarcoma. >> and then what about the chemotherapy? how did he do with that? >> university of pennsylvania professor and veterinarian n nicola mason overseas a national network of comparative oncology trials. >> you can see there's lots of purple dots here. these are the nuclei of the cancer cells. they look identical. >> even a professional looking under a microscope would not be able to tell the difference between a dog with osteo sarcoma and a human? >> correct. >> more than 10,000 dogs in the united states are estimated to get it each year, but only about 1,000 people are, mostly children and young adults. christy gomes was diagnosed in 2020 when she was 11.

which was the leg that was hurting? >> the left. >> so it was hurting up in your thigh? >> up like here. >> christy was used to getting bruised on the soccer field, so she and her mom chalked it up to a sports injury. but after months of physical therapy her doctor discovered osteosarcoma. that white mass had eroded most of christy's thighbone. >> she comes in and she goes christy has a cancerous tumen in her femur and i was like what? >> and i'm not like a crier so i think i was processing it and as i was processing i saw her cry so i started crying. >> and she was like, wait, i have cancer? >> doctors removed the remaining bone and replaced it with this 9-inch metal rod. months of grueling chemotherapy withered christy to 72 pounds. but her pediatric oncologist told us the cancer came back this time in christy's lungs. >> patients once their tumor comes back are really high risk, probably 80% of the time we'll get new tumors. >> have there been a lot of new treatments for osteosarcoma?

>> unfortunately, no. we've been using the same chemotherapy for about the last 60 years or so. >> really? is that because it's a rare form of cancer? >> yeah, it's harder to study because there are smaller numbers of patients to study in large trials. and also since it's rare, not a lot of funding goes to a lot of trials for it. >> but there were trials in pet dogs of an experimental immunotherapy treatment for osteosarcoma that began in 2012 led by dr. nikola mason using the bacteria listeria. >> this is listeria, causes food poisoning. this particular listeria has been genetically modified so it's far less virulent. >> it's also been modified to contain a specific protein called her2. once injected into the dog's blood stream the listeria awakens their immune systems making them feel sick. it also triggers killer immune cells to patrol the body and destroy the cancerous cells.

sandy, a 9-year-old golden retriever, joined a nationwide trial in 2018. she's had her front leg amputated because of osteosarcoma. we met her this past august with her owner matt olson. during the trial dr. mason told us sandy's immune system reacted to the listeria just as she hoped. >> her body temperature started to increase, peaked around 4 hours and started to drop down again. we sort of want to see that because it tells us that the immunotherapy is in fact stimulating her immune response, which is what we want to happen. >> when sandy was first diagnosed her life expectancy with the standard care of amputation and chemotherapy was around a year, but that was four years ago. there's no sign of cancer? >> no. >> and you've had four great years with her? >> yeah. >> did she get like extra treats when she got through it all? >> she got everything. she still does. >> dr. mason believes studying

and treating naturally occurring cancers in pet dogs is more promising compared to using lab mice, which have to be artificially given cancer. >> what we're trying to do is find a better way to determine which of the best treatments to take forward into the human. >> this is not giving dogs rare forms of cancer and then studying them and testing them in a lab? >> exactly. so these are naturally occurring cancers. these are clinical trials just as you or i would go onto a clinical trial if we had cancer. and we do exactly the same in the veterinary field. >> results from the first listeria trial in pet dogs were encouraging showing that dogs tolerated the immunotherapy and that it significantly increased duration of survival time. those results were submitted to the food and drug administration. >> let's just confirm your birthday. >> last year the fda approved a phase 2 clinical trial using

modified listeria to treat young adults and children like christy gomes who have recurrent osteosarcoma that spread to their lungs. >> all right, do you want cartoons on the tv? >> yes, please. >> we were with christy in august at children's hospital in orange county where she received her third listeria infusion. >> that star in the dirk circle, that's the needle going into your vein. kind of cool, huh? >> uh-huh. >> first she was given medications that made her sleepily. when the infusion was happening do you remember it after or sleep through it? >> just sleep. and when i wake up it hits like a truck. >> is that right? you get a headache? >> mm-hmm, bad headache and nauseous. and nauseous and headache, two things i don't like is two things guaranteed. >> when she was dozing the listeria started dripping into christy's iv. so it started now? >> it has. >> it's kind of amazing to think you're both on the cutting edge of medicine.

>> i know. and i don't think she -- i don't think she realizes how important this is. >> it hurts. >> an hour later that truck christy told us about, it hit her hard. but similar to what happened to sandy the golden retriever the listeria appeared to awaken christy's immune system, and after ten minutes her headache got better. a few hours later she was able to leave the hospital. it's so amazing to me how similar humans and dogs immune response is. >> we're very similar. you know, i think perhaps more so than we might like to admit. >> the national cancer institute is spending more than $20 million to analyze cancer samples from pet dogs all over the country and oversee comparative oncology trials to improve treatments in humans and dogs. one of their targets is brain cancer.

this is otto, a 7-year-old boxer who belongs to dan heffron. otto was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2021. and this is julie who's 59. she was diagnosed in 2020 with a similar nearly incurable brain cancer glioblastoma. she's had surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy, but the cancer came back. julie and otto enrolled in clinical trials at the university of minnesota that used virtually the same experimental treatment. a neuro surgeon and setinary surgeon teamed up to operate on otto and other dogs with brain cancer and then shared their data about safety and dosing with a neuro oncologist

treating julie and others. julie along with her husband doug and daughter kelly met otto for the first time last spring. two patients, similar cancers, different species. what's it like to meet otto? inflammation in julie's brain makes it difficult for her to speak. i never thought i would be having conversation with a person and a dog who were having the same treatment. incredible. >> i didn't realize the big deal now. >> yeah, and i didn't until after his first surgery what sort of an impact that he was going to have, not only for him but other dogs and humans. >> but two months after that meeting otto's symptoms worsened. it appeared his cancer returned. dan took him for a final swim in his favorite river and then said good-bye to the dog he called his best friend and a medical pioneer. julie's symptoms have now worsened as well. she's stopped taking part in the trial and is spending time with her family.

she told us she's grateful to have been part of an innovative, interspecies battle to find new treatments. >> i helped fight cancer. >> it gives you satisfaction to know you helped fight cancer? >> yeah. >> i've had two dogs who have had cancer, and the idea that that cancer can be studied and treated and it can have an impact on humans is incredible. >> yeah. may be the key, right? >> yeah, dogs may hold the key. christy gomes is now well into her freshman year in high school says she agrees. >> we have to more common things than we think. >> it's not just they need us for food and -- there's a real connection. >> it's that we have to have more connection than that. >> christy's last scan showed no signs of cancer. she continues to get immunotherapy every three weeks. between treatments and homework, you'll find her with her yorkie benny, a gift from her mom. one more dog that's helping her in her recovery.

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tonight a major development in our story "298 counts of murder," the hunt for the killers who shot down malaysia airlines flight 17 from amsterdam to kuala lumpur in 2017. a russian missile destroyed the boeing 777 over eastern ukraine in russian backed rebel territory. dutch investigators pieced the wreckage together and used social media to document the missile launcher's movements from a russian base. after a two-year trial a dutch court earlier this month found three men guilty of murder. two are former russian security officers, the third is a ukrainian who led pro-russia troops. they were sentenced to life, but

russia refuses to extradite them to the netherlands. i'm scott pelley. we'll be back next week with another edition of "60 minutes." when it was time to sign up for a medicare plan mom couldn't decide. but thanks to the right plan promise to help guide her with the right care team behind her. the right plan promise

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