Skip to main content

Parental Protection Refex

Today at work I was researching the tissue origins of different cell culture systems that we have available to use in the lab. "Cell culture" refers to the process by which we can take mammalian cells and grow them in petri dishes. Mammalian cells are much more complicated to grow than bacteria, and the best growing cells are usually derived from tumors, which have already escaped the normal growth inhibition experienced by most cells in the body.I study the brain, so I was looking up various cell lines derived from brain tumors. For extra background, I looked up information about the cancers on Wikipedia. Neuroblastoma and medulloblastoma are particularly nasty brain tumors that appear most often in children.My career in medical research often requires me to read horrid descriptions of truly awful diseases, and I have become impervious to emotional reactions of any kind when reading about diseases. Today, though, I was gripped with horror as I read the descriptions. Instead of calling up my standard mental image of a human brain to localize the various abnormalities, I found myself imagining the crippling cancers growing inside the brain of my five-month-old son. Even as I type this, I can't seem to escape the vivid (to me, anyway) image of a medulloblastoma growing inside of Max's fourth ventricle.I've written about the happier face of this protective instinct in myself. I guess the protective instinct has an anxious side that even jaded scientists like I am not immune to. I guess I'll reassure myself with lots of smiling pictures of my adorable (and, thank goodness, cancer-free) baby boy.

Comments

  1. Sarah T2:43 PM

    Gosh he is cute! love the big blues and awesome smiles!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Can You Cross Your Toes?

Katie and I had a heated discussion the night before last. We were sitting on the couch watching Jon Stewart when she noticed a large, apparently cancerous growth sticking out of the bottom of my foot. She asked what the big lump in my sock was. "That's my toe," I responded, nonplussed. I had crossed my first and second toes, causing a lump to protrude from the bottom of my sock. Katie was quite alarmed. "You can cross your toes?" "Sure, can't you? Everyone can cross their toes!" "Of course I can't cross my toes. Who can cross their toes?" And I confirmed that Katie could not, in fact, cross her toes. Even manipulating her toes with my fingers, I could not get her toes to stay crossed. She just has very short toes. That led, of course, into a discussion of who was the freak. Were my long, crossable toes abnormal, or were her stubby, uncrossable phalanges the outliers? In case you're confused, here are some pictures. First, of my v...
35 comments
Read more

Leagalize drugs!

The Economist has a wonderful editorial this week about legalizing drugs. I wholeheartedly agree that the world will be better off by far if the United States legalized, taxed, and regulated illicit drugs such as cannabis, cocaine, and heroin. The goods that will come from legalization: 1. We will save the $40 billion the US spends trying to eliminate the supply of drugs. 2. We will save the costs involved in incarcerating so many drug offenders (as well as gain their productivity in society). 3. We will gain money through taxation on the legal drug trade. 4. Legalized drugs will be regulated, and thus purer and safer to take. 5. With all these savings, we will have lots of money to spend on treating drug addiction as a public health issue rather than as a law and order issue. We will have lots of money to fund treatment programs for addicts that are ensnared by the easier availability of drugs. 6. We will prevent tens of thousands of killings in countries that produce drugs when proc...
10 comments
Read more

Max the Model

Katie sometimes talks to Max about all the things he can grow up to be. "Will you grow up to be a scientist like Daddy, or a lawyer like Mommy?" she will query. In recent days, though, we think Max might aspire to be a model. He LOVES the camera. Point it in his direction, and he is mesmerized by the big lens, giving it a big smile. He will sit for long series of photographs, changing his expressions constantly so we'll be sure to get a good one. This is Katie's recent favorite series (mostly because she thinks he looks so cute in the outfit): This is my favorite series, based purely on the dynamic range of emotions that Max is capable of. I am especially fond of the last picture. So cute!
9 comments
Read more