I want to get serious for a few minutes. I have a friend, a pen pal, whom I’ve been writing to on and off for about seven years. We always get down to the difficult questions and try to come up with an answer that satisfies us both. Sometimes we do disagree, but decide that the answer cannot be an objective one, so we leave it there.
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Whenever I tell people I’m interested in biological research, I nearly always hear, “Oh, are you going to cure cancer?” There is a winking intonation in this question. We won’t hold you to it, they say with their friendly smiles. I either respond with my easy refrain – “I’m more interested in function than health” – or a laugh and a shrug that drips with faux-modesty. That mantra ignores, of course, that understanding of function leads to technology.
These days, the vast majority of biological research is designed to create product. A cancer drug, an anti-aging technique, a soybean resistant to disease. Why? Because research is expensive – wildly so. No corporation will waste billions on research without an eye toward application. It reminds me of a creation of Margaret Atwood: Crake, a genius whose pragmatism is beyond the reach of empathy towards individuals. “Grief in the face of inevitable death. The wish to stop time. The human condition.” This is what biotech sells. Only the rich can afford it. The rest of humanity is left praying for a trickle down, decades after initial production – AIDS drugs, vaccinations. Voodoo medicine.
“Oh, are you going to cure cancer?” When I was in high school – long before I had much in the way of scientific predilection – I volunteered quite a bit. I spent some time with an organization that worked with pediatric oncology patients and their families. I played with kids before and during their chemo – puzzles, block games, cards. Exhausted parents would thank me as other volunteers whisked them away to ask how they were holding up.
While with the kids, I usually forgot everything, but every once in a while something would jolt me back. A needle bruise on a tiny arm, tear tracks on a mother’s face, a spot of blood from a bloody nose on a pair of light-up sneakers that could fit in my hand. The phone calls telling me my scheduled visit would no longer be needed. I would leave and sit in my car in the parking lot, slumped with exhaustion. I still remember the numbing tingle on my hands from where the steering wheel stitching dug in.
“Oh, are you going to cure cancer?”