Human Behavior

When the Fox Becomes a Friend – New York Times

Photo Paula Cocozza Credit Christian Sinibaldi

HOW TO BE HUMAN By Paula Cocozza 278 pp. Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt & Company. $26.

Paula Cocozzas hypnotic first novel, How to Be Human, features 34-year-old Mary Green and the urban fox that takes up residence in her London garden. Mary, who as a girl wrote letters to herself to stem acute loneliness, welcomes the vulpine caller. The fox is soon leaving tokens for her, the kind a knight pledges before going into battle. She begins to call him a friend. Within weeks, theyve formed a natural intimacy. In this suspenseful tale animal and human behavior begin to meld, even reverse, and whos dangerous and whos endangered is not always clear.

Mary fetishizes her fox with Jamesian granularity: She understood his show of nonchalance was the disguise for an as yet unarticulated intention. The novel is dynamic with contrasts: the fecund and the fallow. The single and the paired. The urban and the wild. His jaws slackened to liberate his tongue, and he licked his lips with her thoughts. In short order, the fox has possessed her. Time is measured by his visits, his winks, his yawns. His poise today was a stillness with caveats: Every hair bristled with his power to surprise. Mary plies his attentions to her psychic wounds, and who can begrudge her that? Who has not wanted to believe that an animal loves her? If, as I do, one likes to dwell on the handsome presence of animals, and on the rustlings of various leaves, grasses and insects, this novel satisfies and delights. But even greater pleasure is to be had from the dark side of Marys enchantments.

The opening pages present a confounding mystery: Who or what has placed a baby on Marys steps? Next door, Michelle and Eric, with their two small children, seem troubled; Mary perceives them as the classic stressed and self-absorbed young family, somewhat perplexing to all but those in the same straits. She even conjectures, persuasively, that they dont really want the baby shes a crafty one, Mary. When she ventures into their domestic midden she begins to seem like a predator, a fox in a henhouse (indeed, eggs of all kinds are a recurring motif); the narrative balance is wonderfully sly and assured throughout. The mystery surrounding the baby deepens and twists. Readers may slowly come to realize they are on thrillingly unstable ground, waiting to see how far afield Mary will go.

And go she does. Where ones uneasiness sets in will be a personal matter. Is it when Mary leaves her own scent in the garden, by way of a strategic squat? Or is it only once shes gone full-on feral? How soon might one wonder if the fox loves her back, or if hes been outfoxing her all along? And Marys ex, Mark, is a disturbing bystander, on the face of it a clingy pest. But is he as bad as all that?

Cocozza cleverly blurs our capacities to judge Marys narrowing world. I wanted to root for this spirited underdog all the way. But is that who she really is? She might be the eloquently rationalizing Humbert Humbert of the neighborhood, or maybe the spooked and high-strung governess in The Turn of the Screw, losing herself in an obsession. Or, in the end, maybe just another fragile soul trying to get by, chasing a dream of happiness: She tried to keep up, but at some perfect point where distance equaled darkness, he began to silver and fade for her, as if his fur were intercut with nights invisible stripes, and it was no longer possible to know for sure if she was seeing him or seeing the night behind him. One thing is sure: Mary bends whats at hand to her needs. What more does it take to be human?

Elizabeth McKenzies most recent novel is The Portable Veblen.

A version of this review appears in print on June 25, 2017, on Page BR13 of the Sunday Book Review with the headline: Fox and Friend.

See the article here:
When the Fox Becomes a Friend - New York Times

Human Behavior

Ocean pollution is no laughing matter – Mother Nature Network (blog)

We go to the beach to see its natural beauty. If we're lucky, maybe we'll see a dolphin flopping off in the distance, or a whale exploding plumes of vapor above the surface. We never go to the beach to see trash, and yet it's always there. Obviously, the garbage is full of stuff people don't want, like old toothbrushes, flossers, cigarette lighters, shopping bags, popped balloons ... I could go on and on. As you know, most of this junk is made of plastic.

Since most of the disposable plastic can't get recycled it just sits in landfills, releasing toxins. Tons of it journeys down our waterways, into the depths of the oceans or pushed onto the beaches and most sadly, stuck in the bodies of just about everything that lives on our planet.

Join me exclusively on MNN as I reflect about the impact that human behavior has on our fellow Earthlings. As you can tell, this piece is about the immense problem that's bleeding into our oceans: disposable plastic.

Let's take a quick trip to Midway Atoll, which is located between North America and Asia in other words, an island in the middle of nowhere. Just a few dozen people live there, and yet the tiny patch of land is completely littered with human-produced garbage.

The garbage that's strewn about is not new it takes quite a long time to reach Midway via the ocean currents. While the plastic is floating around in the ocean, it accumulates algae particles on it, and this algae confuses seabirds, like the Laysan albatross, into thinking the plastic is food. For instance, small lighters are often confused for squid bodies.

It's not just seabirds that feel the burn from plastics invading their environment. All kinds of animals wind up either eating plastic or getting entangled.

Since we humans are causing these problems, we need to find solutions. The animals can't. They have evolved to thrive in their environments. Disposable plastic is less than a century old, they don't have time to adapt even though I wish they would try!

Well, some animals do try, like these hermit crabs.

If you're feeling powerless from this suffocating tidal wave of garbage, there are some things you can do. Before the planet gets zip-locked in an airless vacuum filled with hormone disruptors (unpronounceably called phthalates), we can refuse much of this stuff. We need to be pickier, and let those around know it, too. We need to act like this albatross chick:

And tell our own chic--er, children about it. We humans need to change our behavior before every trip to the beach winds up like this:

Thanks to Rob Lang for doing a guest stint on the photo blog for MNN! He lives in Seattle, and you can follow him on Instagram/UnderdoneComics, where he posts a new cartoon almost every weekday morning. You can buy shirts, environmentally righteous tote bags, prints and other stuff at UnderdoneComics.com.

See original here:
Ocean pollution is no laughing matter - Mother Nature Network (blog)

Genetics

FDA padlocks any new human tests on Seattle Genetics’ cancer drug in the wake of more deaths – Endpoints News

Clay Siegall, CEO, Seattle Genetics

In the wake of Seattle Genetics announcement that a disturbing tilt in deaths pointed to a likely safety problem for its late-stage cancer drug vadastuximab talirine (SGN-CD33A), the FDA has stepped in to yank the IND and officially put any human testing on hold.

The biotech $SGEN reported the FDAs move in a filing with the SEC this morning.

Seattle Genetics had already hit the brakes on its R&D work on the drug three days ago, scrapping the Phase III for acute myeloid leukemia and ordering a halt to any other testing until they can get a better read on the situation. It will also have to convince regulators that the drug is safe for testing after the FDA had lifted its first clinical hold on the drug just three months ago. That first hold on its early-stage work came after four patients died.

Those deaths were linked to liver toxicity, a classic red flag on safety. But this time one of the few clues provided by Seattle Genetics is that liver toxicity did not appear to be behind the disturbing rate of deaths investigators were seeing.

Back in March the biotech reported that it was getting restarted on the clinical work after it came up with revised eligibility criteria and stopping rules for veno-occlusive disease.The FDA agreed to lift the hold only two months after it was dropped on Seattle Genetics.

With its big Immunomedics deal axed by activists and its lead clinical drug in big trouble, Seattle Genetics CEO Clay Siegall will come under heavier pressure to diversify beyond Adcetris.

News reports for those who discover, develop, and market drugs. Join 16,000+ biopharma pros who read Endpoints News articles by email every day. Free subscription.

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FDA padlocks any new human tests on Seattle Genetics' cancer drug in the wake of more deaths - Endpoints News

Genetics

‘Genetics’ comment leads to calls for board member’s resignation … – NBC2 News

A member of the Governing Board of the State University apologized after suggesting the reason women make less than men is because of genetics.

But the National Organization for Women says the apology doesnt go far enough.

While discussing the pay gap between men and women graduates, Board of Governors member Ed Morton said: The women are given, maybe some of it is genetic, I dont know. Im not smart enough to know the difference.

A furor followed.

Governor Rick Scott, who appointed Morton, made it clear he didnt agree and released a statement through his press secretary saying, "As a father of two daughters, the Governor absolutely does not agree with this statement."

The following day, Morton apologized in a statement that said in part, I chose my words poorly. My belief is that women and men should be valued equally in the workplace.

The apology isnt enough for the National Organization for Women.

Mr. Morton should resign, said Barbara DeVane, a Lobbyist for Florida NOW.

NOW says if Morton doesnt step down, Rick Scott should remove him from office.

No one in 2017 should ever be making such a statement. Especially someone whos on the Board of Governors, DeVane said.

Florida is one of 15 states that has not ratified the Equal Rights Amendment.

Every session we dont even get a hearing, just like this past session. So for someone in this position to be making such a statement is idiotic and ignorant, she said. Genetics has nothing to do with the difference in salary between a man and a woman. It all has to do with discrimination.

In Florida, women who graduate from state universities are being paid on average $5,500 less each year than men.

Scotts press office failed to issue a statement regarding whether or not the governor would consider removing Morton from office in time for this story.

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'Genetics' comment leads to calls for board member's resignation ... - NBC2 News

Genetics

Did That Fox Just Wag Its Tail? Inside a Bold Genetics Experiment – Undark Magazine

One spring morning in 1963, a Soviet scientist named Lyudmila Trut was making the rounds at a commercial fox farm, visiting several litters of three-week-old fox pups. As she approached one cage, a fuzzy male pup named Ember began to wag his tail. This simple, back-and-forth movement was a startling sight. Several years earlier, Trut and another scientist had launched an audacious experiment to solve the mysteries surrounding dog domestication by trying to replicate the process in foxes. Embers restless tail was the best sign yet that they were succeeding.

BOOK REVIEW How to Tame a Fox (and Build a Dog): Visionary Scientists and a Siberian Tale of Jump-Started Evolution, by Lee Alan DugatkinandLyudmila Trut (University of Chicago, 240 pages).

A six-decade project that challenged conventional wisdom about domestication and evolution and is still yielding new scientific insights.

Wagging their tails in response to humans is one of the signature behaviors of dogs, and until that day, they were the only animals observed to do so, Trut and the biologist Lee Alan Dugatkin write in their new book, How to Tame a Fox (and Build a Dog). And yet, here was Ember, who appeared to be wagging his tail due to a new emotional response to people, and if other pups also began to do so, that might prove to be a big step in the process of domestication. This comprehensive book provides an inside look at one of the most remarkable and longest-running experiments in science. Its a rich and fascinating story of a six-decade project that challenged conventional wisdom about domestication and evolution and is still yielding new scientific insights today.

The fox experiment was the brainchild of Dmitri Belyaev, a geneticist who worked at Moscows Central Research Laboratory on Fur Breeding Animals, where he was tasked with helping fox breeders produce animals that would earn more money for the Soviet Unions lucrative fur industry. But as he worked with the often-ferocious foxes that lived on Soviet fur farms, he began to wonder how humans had managed to tame the wolf a close relative of the fox into the docile domestic dog. Fossil evidence provided snapshots of how wild animals had changed over the course of domestication, but a major riddle remained unsolved: How had the process begun in the first place? As Dugatkin and Trut put it, How had fierce wild animals, intensely averse to human contact, become docile enough for our human ancestors to have started breeding them?

Belyaev had a theory. In his own work, he had noticed that while most foxes were aggressive or agitated around people, a few seemed to have an innate calmness. Perhaps, he speculated, all our ancestors had done was breed the wild wolves that seemed to be the most naturally docile, exhibiting the least fear of and aggression toward humans. And over evolutionary time, as our early ancestors had begun raising them and selecting for this innate tameness, the animals became more and more docile, Dugatkin and Trut write. He thought that all of the other changes involved in domestication had been triggered by this change in the behavioral selection pressure for tameness.

Belyaev decided to test his theory by putting it into action. He would start with wild foxes, breeding the tamest ones he could find over the course of many generations. If he could basically turn a fox into a dog-like animal, he might solve the longstanding riddle of how domestication comes about, the authors write.

The idea wasnt just scientifically bold it was politically risky. Stalins government had banned genetics research in 1948, calling it a bourgeois perversion, and many leading geneticists had been fired, arrested, imprisoned, and even executed. (Belyaevs older brother, a prominent geneticist, was among those killed.) So Belyaev would have to be discreet about the real purpose of his experiment, spinning it as physiological, rather than genetic, research.

In 1958, he recruited Trut, a young animal behaviorist, to run the experiment. She almost immediately began to have doubts about the endeavor. Having had no prior experience with foxes, Lyudmila was taken aback at first by how aggressive they were, Dugatkin and Trut write. Becoming acquainted with these fire-breathing dragons, as she called them, snarling and lunging at her when she approached their cages, she found it hard to believe that they could ever be tamed. Still, she would try. Each morning, she donned a pair of thick gloves and began visiting each fox, carefully observing its reaction as she approached, opened its cage, and slid a stick inside. She selected the calmest foxes, bred them together, and then selected the tamest of the pups to parent the next generation.

It didnt take long for dog-like traits to emerge. By the fourth generation and just the fourth year of the experiment Ember was wagging his tail. By the sixth, about 2 percent of the pups would lick Truts hand, roll over for belly rubs, and cry when their human caretakers walked away. By the following generation, 10 percent of the pups were displaying these behaviors. There seemed to be no doubt at all that these pups, from as early as they could walk, eagerly sought contact with humans, Dugatkin and Trut write. These tame foxes also seemed to have extended puppyhoods, remaining playful and curious well past the age that wild fox pups typically mature. Their bodies changed, too; the tame foxes developed curly tails, floppy ears, and piebald coats.

Maybe it wasnt the foxes underlying genetic code that was changing, but how the genes were regulated or expressed. The idea was wildly ahead of its time.

These new traits had appeared mind-bogglingly fast, over far fewer years and generations than evolution was thought to occur. The speed and nature of the changes led Belyaev to propose a radical theory. Belyaev had realized that most of the changes theyd seen in the foxes involved changes in the timing of when traits turn on and off, Dugatkin and Trut write. Many of the changes they were observing in the tamer foxes involved retaining a juvenile trait longer than normal. The whimpering was a youthful behavior that normally stopped as foxes matured. So was calmness; fox pups are serenely calm when theyre first born, but as they age, foxes typically become quite high-strung. It occurred to Belyaev that maybe it wasnt the foxes underlying genetic code that was changing from one generation to the next, but how the animals genes were regulated or expressed; certain genes that were already present in wild foxes might have become more or less active in the tame ones, or have turned on or off at different stages of development.

The idea was wildly ahead of its time, and it would be decades before research would bear it out. In the meantime, Belyaev and Trut kept breeding foxes. They built their own experimental fox farm in Siberia, and Trut moved into a nearby house with some of the tamest foxes, which quickly adopted behaviors common in pet dogs. (A visiting researcher later demonstrated that the tame foxes had the same high level of social intelligence that dogs did and better social cognition than the wild foxes.) Belyaev died in 1985, but two decades later, researchers finally validated his hypothesis, documenting differences in gene expression between tame and wild or aggressive foxes. (Gene expression isnt the entire story researchers have also found changes in gene sequence in the tame foxes but its clearly an important part of it.)

Dugatkin and Trut deftly synthesize scientific findings from fields ranging from genetics to animal cognition and openly grapple with some provocative unanswered questions: How much further can scientists push these foxes? What do the foxes tell us about the domestication of more distant species, such as cows and pigs? And might they teach us something about our own evolution? (Belyaev proposed that as we organized ourselves into ever-larger social groups, there would have been a selective advantage for individuals who were calm and comfortable around others, rather than aggressive and fearful. Essentially, we are domesticated, but in our case self-domesticated, primates, Dugatkin and Trut write.) The answers to these questions wont come easy, but the experiment is still running; considering what scientists have learned so far, theres no telling what evolutionary insights might emerge if they keep Belyaevs legacy and his line of tame foxes alive for another 60 years.

Emily Anthes, who has written for Undark, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Wired, and Scientific American, among other publications, is the author of Frankensteins Cat: Cuddling Up to Biotechs Brave New Beasts.

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Did That Fox Just Wag Its Tail? Inside a Bold Genetics Experiment - Undark Magazine

Genetics

Florida higher education official said women may earn less than men because of genetics – New York Daily News

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Florida higher education official said women may earn less than men because of genetics - New York Daily News

Genetics

Fungal Genetics Conference Q&A identifying new L maculans effectors, a fungal pathogen of oilseed rape – BMC Blogs Network (blog)

Fungal Biology and Biotechnologyrecently attended the 29th Fungal Genetics Conference in California. Whilst there, we invited three young scientists who presented excellent posters to take part in a Q&A. In this blog we talk to Julie Gervais, a third year PhD student in INRA BIOGER (France) whos currently working on a fungal pathogen of oilseed rape, Leptosphaeria maculans.

Julie Gervais 23 Jun 2017

Leptosphaeria maculans is an oilseed rape pathogen and is responsible for the stem canker disease.

Pixabay

My name is Julie Gervais and I am a third year PhD student in INRA BIOGER (France) working on a fungal pathogen of oilseed rape, Leptosphaeria maculans, which is responsible for the stem canker disease. This fungus has two colonization stages of the plant. During the first stage, the fungus infects leaves and cotyledons (the first leaves to appear from a germinating seed). Once in the leaves, the fungus has a short biotrophic stage of 10 days and then switches to necrotrophy.

Following this primary leaf infection, L. maculans grows inside the stem tissues during a long endophytic systemic colonization. This colonization is completely symptomless and may last up to 9 months. I am aiming to gain a better understanding of how the fungus can grow inside the oilseed rape stem for several months without causing any symptoms. I am particularly focused on the identification of new effectors, secreted proteins, produced by the fungus enabling it to develop itself efficiently into the plant.

I am particularly focused on the identification of new effectors, secreted proteins, produced by the fungus enabling it to develop itself efficiently into the plant.

By transcriptomic analysis, I identified late effector candidates, under-expressed in the early colonization stage and over-expressed in the infected stems. My analysis revealed a link between the regulation of expression of effectors and their genomic location: the late effector candidates, putatively involved in systemic colonization, are located in gene-rich genomic regions, whereas the early effector genes, over-expressed in the early colonization stage, are located in gene-poor regions of the genome. These results were recently published in an article of Molecular Plant Pathology.

I am also trying to confirm the role of effector for six late effector candidates: I am measuring the impact of the silencing of these genes on the fungal growth inside the stem. Preliminary results indicated that the silencing of one of these candidates induced smaller necrosis on the stem.

Another aim of my thesis is to identify new resistances to control L. maculans. The identification of new effector genes would contribute to the identification of new resistance genes specific to these effectors.

During my studies, I became more interested in the understanding of interactions between plants and micro-organisms, so I decided to pursue this interest in my thesis on L. maculans and its host, oilseed rape. I especially enjoy trying to dissect the network of interactions between the two organisms and to be able to apply such findings in the effective control of plant diseases.

I would advise young scientists to stay focused on what they are interested in and to always take pleasure in what they do. Science is fun!

I was able to attend to the Fungal Genetics Conference thanks to travel fundings from the Acadmie dagriculture (grant Jean & Marie-Louise Dufrenoy) and from the Genetics Society of America.

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Fungal Genetics Conference Q&A identifying new L maculans effectors, a fungal pathogen of oilseed rape - BMC Blogs Network (blog)

Cell Biology

Cells in fish’s spinal discs repair themselves – Phys.Org

June 22, 2017 In this developing backbone of a zebrafish, collapsed inner cells (green) are replaced by newly fluid-filled sheath cells (red) from the outer layer. The remaining cellular debris clumps together in the center of the structure, which is called a notochord. Credit: Jennifer Bagwell, Duke University

Duke researchers have discovered a unique repair mechanism in the developing backbone of zebrafish that could give insight into why spinal discs of longer-lived organisms like humans degenerate with age.

The repair mechanism apparently protects the fluid-filled cells of the notochord, the precursor of the spine, from mechanical stress as a young fish begins swimming. Notochord cells go on to form the gelatinous center of intervertebral discs, the flat, round cushions wedged between each vertebrae that act as shock absorbers for the spine.

The disappearance of these cells over time is associated with degenerative disc disease, a major cause of human pain and disability worldwide.

"It is not difficult to speculate that these same mechanisms of repair and regeneration are present in humans at very early stages, but are lost over time," said Michel Bagnat, Ph.D., senior author of the study and assistant professor of cell biology at Duke University School of Medicine. "If we are going to think about techniques that foster intervertebral disc regeneration, this is the basic biology we need to understand."

The study appears June 22, 2017, in Current Biology.

Bagnat likens the notochord to a garden hose filled with water. The hardy structure consists of a sheath of epithelial cells surrounding a collection of giant fluid-filled or "vacuolated" cells. During development, these vacuolated cells rarely pop, despite being under constant mechanical stress. Recent research has suggested that tiny pouches known as caveolae (Latin for "little caves") that form in the plasma membrane of these cells can provide a buffer against stretching or swelling.

To see whether the caveolae protected vacuoles from bursting, his team and collaborators from Germany generated mutants of three caveolar genes in their model organism, the zebrafish. Because these small aquarium fish are transparent as embryos, the scientists could easily visualize any spinal defects triggered by the loss of caveolae.

The researchers found that when the mutant embryos hatched and started swimming, exerting pressure on their underdeveloped backbones, their vacuolated cells started to break up. While the finding confirmed their suspicions, it turned up a puzzling discovery. "In the caveolar mutants, you see these serial lesions up and down the notochord, and yet the mature spine formed normally," said Bagnat. "That was very puzzling to us."

To figure out how that was possible, lead authors Jamie Garcia and Jennifer Bagwell took a closer look at the notochord of mutant fish. They marked the vacuolated cells green and the surrounding epithelial sheath cells red and then filmed the fish shortly after they hatched and started swimming. First, they could see an occasional vacuolated cell break and spill its contents like a water balloon. Then, over the course of fifteen hours, a nearby epithelial sheath cell would move in, crawl over the detritus of the collapsed cell, and morph into a new vacuolated cell.

They performed a few more experiments and found that the repair response was triggered by the release of the cell contents, specifically the basic molecular building blocks known as nucleotides. The researchers then isolated live epithelial sheath cells and treated them with nucleotide analogs to show that they turned into vacuolated cells.

"These cells, which reside in the discs of both zebrafish and man, seem capable of controlling their own repair and regeneration," said Bagnat. "Perhaps it is a continuous release of nucleotides that is important for keeping the disc in good shape."

The study may offer insight not only into the development of back and neck pain, but also into the origins of cancer. Their data suggests that chordomas, rare and aggressive notochord cell tumors, may begin when epithelial sheath cells leave the notochord and invade the skull and other tissues.

Explore further: Stem cells therapy for naturally occurring intervertebral disc disease

More information: "Sheath cell invasion and trans-differentiation repair mechanical damage caused by loss of caveolae in the zebrafish notochord," Jamie Garcia, Jennifer Bagwell, Brian Njaine, James Norman, Daniel S. Levic, Susan Wopat, Sara E. Miller, Xiaojing Liu, Jason W. Locasale, Didier Y.R. Stainier and Michel Bagnat. Current Biology, June 22, 2017. DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2017.05.035

Journal reference: Current Biology

Provided by: Duke University

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Duke researchers have discovered a unique repair mechanism in the developing backbone of zebrafish that could give insight into why spinal discs of longer-lived organisms like humans degenerate with age.

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Biochemistry

An academic career that would put many to shame – Khayelitsha biochemistry graduate off to the US – Times LIVE

Lungelo Mandyoli has had a stutter since childhood but that hasnt prevented him from achieving a smooth academic career trajectory which has earned him a prestigious international scholarship.

Mandyoli has been selected as a Fulbright Scholarship fellow - the flagship foreign exchange programme for the US - to complete his PhD in biochemistry at the Texas A&M University in America.

The 25-year-old who works as a research assistant at the University of the Western Cape was raised in Khayelitsha Cape Town by his single father whose role as a caregiver and breadwinner supported him after his mother died when he was three years old.

Witnessing his fathers discipline and dedication led Mandyoli to believe he could achieve whatever he wanted to.

I wouldnt say I was an overachiever Mandyoli said.

Maybe I was above average but I always worked hard.

Mandyoli first graduated with a BSc degree in biotechnology from UWC in 2013 before going on to earn a Masters degree in biochemistry for which he earned the Metrohm Prize as the universitys top Masters student two years later.

Before choosing biochemistry the avid reader of African novels wanted to become a doctor.

My love for medicine changed when I got to understand that its impact can be more effective in applications that benefit many people such as drug discovery.

During his scholarship Mandloyi hopes to pursue doctoral studies in biochemistry and biophysics with a specialty in structural biology while focusing his research on targeting protein pathogens in TB and HIV.

We track proteins in TB that help TB to affect us easily and cause disease. We try to study it structurally and functionally and then from there on we try to target its host.

When he is not in the lab Mandyoli enjoys listening to news and football games with his father on their radio at home.

Its like any father and son relationship. It has its ups and downs but hes always been there for me when I need him.

-TimesLIVE

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An academic career that would put many to shame - Khayelitsha biochemistry graduate off to the US - Times LIVE

Biochemistry

A century of women in medicine at Yale – Yale News

June 21, 2017

Photo credit: Robert Lisak

By Natasha Strydhorst

In 1916, more than 100 years after its founding, the Yale School of Medicine admitted its first female students. At the time, this stood in marked contrast to the ethos of other institutions like Harvard, which considered it unladylike for women to attend medical school. By necessity, the three women admitted to the Class of 1916 were exceptionalunlike their male counterparts, who needed only two years of college education, they had to hold a college degree, and a quota further restricted the number of women admitted.

One of the three, Louise Farnam, held a Ph.D. in Physiological Chemistry from Yale. Although commonly known for her connection to the Louise Farnam memorial bathrooms (a donation from her father, an economics professor at Yale, made a womens lavatory possible, paving the way for female enrollment), Farnam was remarkable in her own right. Her story remains a source of inspiration to women in the medical field to this day.

In a talk in the Historical Library at this years reunion, Susan Baserga, M.D. 88, Ph.D. 88, FW 93, professor of molecular biophysics and biochemistry, of genetics and therapeutic radiology, recounted Farnams story as she traced the history of women at the School of Medicine. In 1978, while Baserga was an undergraduate at Yale College, her interest in the topic was sparked by a women in medicine course taught by Florence Haseltine, M.D., and Lisa Anderson, then-director of the Office for Women in Medicine. In this course, Mary Roth Walsh, Ph.D., a professor at the University of Lowell in Massachusetts spoke about barriers to women in medicine. In her talk, Roth Walsh noted an intriguing trend: more women practiced medicine before the turn of the 19th century than shortly thereafterwhen a college education, available almost exclusively to men, became essential to being a physician.

Women now comprise about 50 percent of enrolled students, 24 percent of professors, and two department chairs at the School of Medicine. While 5 percent of physicians in the United States in 1920 were women, that number is now 34 percent, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

When Farnam entered the medical school, her goal was to serve as a missionary to China. She graduated with highest honors alongside the honor of being selected as a commencement speaker. In 1921, she began her work in China at Yali (the College of Yale-in-China), the Changsha mission that opened in 1906. She further distinguished herself there, when, in 1930during the civil war between Nationalists and Communistsshe surrendered a spot on the evacuation vessel to tend a wounded soldier. I hate to go off and leave a man with a bullet in his chest liable to have pneumonia with no doctor on board. So I stayed, she wrote to her parents.

In the class following Farnams, only one woman was enrolled: Ella Wakeman. There was no fuss about this, Wakeman wrote, implying that this was because of her down-to-earth attitude, sensible clothing, and neatness. Reflecting on her lab partner, she wrote, It was probably a trial to him to have a partner in whose presence he had to behave.

Even as both medicine and the representation of women in the field have advanced markedly since the years of Farnams and Wakemans attendance at Yale, the underrepresentation of women in biomedical research remains a source of concern.

This article was submitted by Tiffany Penn on June 21, 2017.

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A century of women in medicine at Yale - Yale News