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A Matter of Health

Brighter futures

by Ruth SoRelle, MPH

Science and scientists have their doldrums.

Too little funding, too few stem cell lines, the problem of sorting through burgeoning new technologies, the continual process of grant writing, the ongoing need to research, write and publish. All of these are current problems that beset today’s biomedical researchers. Sometimes it seems as though thickened molasses impedes any progress.

Then the sun shines through. In another story in this issue of From the Laboratories at Baylor College of Medicine, the promise of Sean McGuire, PhD and soon MD, is an example. The idea that someone can pursue a dream from high school through graduate and medical school with such single-minded devotion gives one hope that science will continue to advance at the breakneck pace that has marked the past century.

Students crowd the halls of the nation’s medical school and schools of biomedical sciences, like the Graduate School at BCM. They have not taken the easy road. Their “educations” promise to last until their 30s, when they finish post-doctoral training and compete for one of the coveted instructorships or assistant professorships in universities and colleges where science takes pre-eminence. Often their lives are based on what is called “soft money” in scientific terms. Unlike the “soft money” of politics, this is not of dubious character but rather of dubious endurance. They live from grant-to-grant, pursuing their ideas while writing the grants that fund their goals.

The goals are lofty. They want to understand the cell and how it works. From there, they can determine how cells go wrong and when. How do cells in a human journey from the merging of a sperm and an ovum into the many differentiated tissues and organs that make up man? How does it all work? What can they do to stop the cells that go wrong and cause cancer? Or the immune system cells that are caught napping, allowing infections to creep in and actually threaten the existence of the organism they host.

They seek to feed the world, cure cancer, heart disease and a host of other illnesses. They want to understand how man developed, how the brain works and why, sometimes, it does not. They want to answer questions and put the pieces of the puzzle together.

The best and brightest will survive and go on to accomplish great things. Today they are in the halls of institutions like Baylor College of Medicine, laughing and joking. At times, they do not appear to be the hope for cures and answers. They wear funny little beards, shirts that bare their navels and shorts that droop to their knees. They scuff around in mules and untied tennis shoes. Their conversation is as likely to deal with their love lives as their latest advance in the laboratory.

Yet, their eyes are focused on the future and what they can accomplish. At the laboratory bench, they don their gloves, their goggles and the other gear that protects them as they begin the day’s work – answering tomorrow’s questions. I can hardly wait to see what and how they do.

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