Are Molecular Biologists and Biochemists Doing Enough?
BY GEORGE C. HILL While I was teaching and conducting research at Meharry Medical College for 19 years, I had a tremendous graduate student. Once, prior to a lab meeting on a Monday, she casually mentioned to me on the previous Friday that she would not be present for the lab meeting as she had a medical appointment. Later it became clear that she was having a double mastectomy. She came through the surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy well and received her Ph.D. in biomedical sciences in the next few months working on the biochemistry of African trypanosomes. Unfortunately, she passed 12 months later from breast cancer. She was a beautiful African American woman not yet 30 years old. I am now at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine but have never forgotten this young lady. Given the fact that 1 in 8 women in the United States will have an experience with breast cancer, many of us have probably had loved ones or friends who have been affected by this disease. Breast cancer is the m
