Natural Obsessions by Natalie Angier

Natural Obsessions by Natalie Angier

Author:Natalie Angier [Angier, Natalie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Non-Fiction, Oncology, Science, Science & Math, Medicine & Health Sciences, Medicine
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00


As the metastasis project coalesced, Weinberg plowed ever more of the lab’s resources into it. Ren£ was assigned his personal technician, an unusual privilege for a new postdoc even at the ample Whitehead. Shelly Bernstein had a kind of miniature metastasis lab: one full-time and one part-time technician and a college student worked under him. As a clinical doctor, Shelly was accustomed to supervising a pool of nurses, medical students, and interns—as well as his patients—and he seemed to enjoy organizing assignments and just generally being in charge. I could tell that he was proficient at giving orders by listening to him talk on the lab phone. He often received calls from Children’s Hospital and would respond to whoever was on the other end in a firm voice that bounced all over the room.

“Tell her she’s got to take her medication,” he said during one conversation. “Tell her if she doesn’t take her medication, she’s going to die.”

Despite the evident effort and Shelly’s brisk managerial style, Weinberg was eager to nudge progress along. The metastasis project, he believed, was the most vital experiment in his lab, and he wanted to secure the data for the second paper, one that would announce: “We have cloned a human metastasis gene. This is what the gene looks like, here’s its chemical sequence, and X times out of Y the clone causes nonmetastatic tumor cells to spread.” Weinberg often stopped by Shelly’s workbench to offer advice or support, and whenever he called in from out of town, Shelly was one of the people he’d ask to speak to.

Swept up by the accelerating excitement, I kept my ears cupped forward, like satellite dishes, for news of the final breakthrough, the definitive cloning of a metastasis gene. One lunch hour, I saw Shelly and Bob standing ahead of me in the cafeteria line. I crept up behind them to hear their conversation.

“If you’re pretty sure you’ve got the clone, I think you should try transfecting it into REF’s,” Bob said to Shelly. The rat embryo fibroblast is considered closer to the cells of a living animal than the mouse cell line that Shelly had used in his experiments. “That shouldn’t be too hard to do on the side,” said Weinberg. “I think it would be a good thing to include in the next paper.”

“Mmm, hmm,” said Shelly, noncommittally.

“Well, let’s talk about it when you’ve nailed down the clone,” Weinberg said. And they scurried up ahead to the cash register. I was pleased that Weinberg sounded so optimistic about the cloning of the metastasis gene.

That afternoon, I wandered by to talk to Shelly again. He was washing up at the sink that gushed forth hot and cold water when you step on floor pedals. I had my maroon leather briefcase with me, and I set it down beside our feet.

“Hi, Shelly,” I said.

“Hello,” he replied, distractedly. He wasn’t looking at me, and it crossed my mind that he might not want to be disturbed, but I felt too awkward to stop the conversation.



Download



Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.