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Module 4 Blog

“The practice of the infirmary, both medical and surgical, was conducted entirely by women; but a board of consulting physicians, men of high standing in the profession, gave it the sanction of their names.” -Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman to receive a medical degree in the United States

Women vs. Men: How did we get here?

Credit: CollegeHumor. "How Differently Men And Women See The World."

Society has long been plagued by the horrible diseases of sexism and misogyny. The concept of the inferiority of women has dominated societal standards and mindsets for centuries and perhaps even millennia. Sure, cultures have differed here and there with their views on women, but each has displayed, at one point or another, the common image of man versus woman. Men are the heroes. Men are the gladiators, the warriors, the leaders, the individuals who push their tribe/country/nation forward. Women are the ones who take care of the home and the family, and they are the ones who are supposed to be the caretakers for when the men return home at the end of the day. How did we get here?

I want to take this concept back to one of the most well-known, ancient, and beautiful civilizations– Ancient Greece. We all know that the Ancient Greeks worshipped gods and goddesses, collectively known as the Olympians. However, I want to emphasize that goddesses were included. Because the Olympians included both men and women, it has been argued that Greeks had a deep love and respect for women and that women were considered extremely powerful. However, it seems that this argument only worked in terms of mythology. In reality, society shoved women into being second to men. Greek women were unable to vote, own land, or inherit, and it was long established that the woman’s place was in the home and to rear children. The mythological image of women is powerful, strong, and independent but also maternal, loving, and gentle. However, as I said, these were all just myths, and how women were actually treated in society differed greatly. What’s crazy is that we can see this pattern in other civilizations such as Ancient Egypt, Ancient China, and Ancient India.

While the worshipping of gods and goddesses is no longer a common, modern practice, the view of women being inferior to men has long survived. Not only do we still see this in everyday life and laypeople, but it’s especially prominent in certain professional settings as well. The prestige of medicine doesn’t make the field any different.

Where have we seen this before?

Credit: Rosalind Franklin in Paris. Photo: Vittorio Luzzati

Rosalind Franklin. Her story is probably one of the most well-known cases of sexism in science. We’ll get into her scientific contributions in a little bit, but I first want to highlight this issue in her childhood and early adulthood. Though she expressed a great interest in the sciences while also being known as an outstanding student, her father actively discouraged her from becoming a scientist. He often noted how science is no career for a woman and that it should be reserved for men. In the field, she was often noted to be difficult to work with and stubborn due to her “belligerent moods”. In her days, when women were outspoken and headstrong, men thought that they would need to be put in her place or be asked to leave. Who would have thought that this exact personality trait would be what led to her success?

Credit: King's College of London. Photo 51: DNA X-ray diffraction image

Franklin studied X-ray crystallography in Paris and ended up conducting groundbreaking research on the molecular structure of coal. X-ray crystallography is one of the most favored techniques in observing molecular structures based on how they bend the x-ray beams. However, she is best known for her x-ray diffraction image that paved the way to discovering DNA’s double-helical structure. It wasn’t until after that when American biologist James Watson and English physicist Francis Crick used Franklin’s image to firmly establish the double-helix model of DNA. Though the two individuals credited Franklin for her contribution, their disdain towards Franklin became apparent in their accounts. They often commented on how she chose not to highlight her femininity such as an interest in clothing and women qualities. In addition, Watson and Crick decided not to include how much Franklin’s photo actually meant to them and how much it actually contributed.

In 1962, James Watson, Francis Crick, and Maurice Wilkins were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discovery of the molecular structure of DNA, which helped solve one of the most important of all biological questions. Rosalind Franklin did not receive a Nobel Prize. This was due in part to the Nobel Prize Committee's several stipulations such as no posthumous awards and a limit to how many people can share one prize. Franklin also never received a nomination, which was due in large part to her gender at the time. Though she led a short life of only 37 years, she is now receiving the recognition and praise she so long deserved. On what would have been her 100th birthday, her name blew up everywhere in remembrance, highlighting her many accomplishments and contributions to science.

“Science, for me, gives a partial explanation for life. In so far as it goes, it is based on fact, experience and experiment.” Rosalind Franklin

The Effects on Today’s Young Women and Girls

Australia

This issue isn’t specific to one country or another. It happens in all specialties, in all fields, and all nations. Here’s a fairly recent movement that’s happening in Australia.

Credit: (c) nature

In 2019, it was discovered that female private investigators were receiving far less funding compared to their male counterparts in terms of National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) grants. This was mirrored in the U.S. as well with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) awarding female first-time principal investigators significantly smaller grants than those given to men in the same position. These discrepancies go beyond the simple idea of gender. Before, grant funding didn't take into account a woman’s life factors such as childcare, pregnancy, and overall motherhood. This is one of the many ways that women and young girls have been taught that society gives them an ultimatum– family or work. This has caused many young female scientists to leave the field because you can’t move forward if you don’t get the appropriate funding. In turn, men are publishing more than women, which further perpetuates the cycle of men receiving more funding. As a result, there has been a circulating petition in Australia calling for equitable funding in STEM, which, so far, has received over 6000 signatures.

United States

Dr. Erica Kaye wrote on her personal experiences with misogyny in medicine. She is a physician at St. Jude’s Children Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, and she is no stranger to this issue. She details how men, even many years her senior, often made comments about her appearance and clothing rather than her expertise and knowledge as a physician. She was often told that women are too emotional to be doctors or that they should be more considerate of their children. Many would ask why she isn’t taking care of her husband. However, when she tells these stories to her male friends or male colleagues, they are often shocked and tend to dismiss these cases saying that not all men are like that or that those are just “outlier stories”. Her strategy for this misconception is to make stories and accounts more mainstream and prominent so that no one can argue that the issue isn’t there. What a terrible form of gaslighting is the way I see it.

She emphasizes how women should not be afraid to speak up on these instances and to not hang their head down, afraid to cause a scene. It’s because society has taught women that if they speak their minds and “fight” back that they’re provoking men and asking for a fight. When in reality, deflecting these types of comments only perpetuates the issue and carries it over to the later generations.

Ask yourself.

What kind of message is this sending to the young girls of our world? We tell them that they can do whatever they want and be whoever they want to be, but then we put them out in the real world and show them that JUST KIDDING society doesn’t treat you like that because of your gender. When there’s a need for organizations that support female physicians, female scientists, or women in STEM, that’s when you should be able to see there’s a problem. You don’t see assistive programs like this for men. Ask yourself why.

I’ll leave off with this one note. As an aspiring physician, I want to be known as just that. I don’t want to be told well you’re good for a female doctor or you’re a great female physician. No. That is because once you apply that adjective, you immediately put me into a sub-category or a sub-group. I don’t want to be put into a sub-group, and I certainly don’t want young girls to feel like they can only be compared to other females because they’re somehow not on the same level as men.

By: Lianna Zhou 11-30-21

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November 12th 1869 saw Edinburgh University first admit women to the study of medicine.

Sophia Jex-Blake and her friend Edith Pechy were the first to attend the prestigious medical school after much hard campaigning on Sophia’s part. Jex-Blake describes the scene here as the two friends went to take their exams……“: “On the afternoon of Friday 18th November 1870, we walked to the Surgeon’s Hall, where the anatomy examination was to be held. As soon as we reached the Surgeon’s Hall we saw a dense mob filling up the road… The crowd was sufficient to stop all the traffic for an hour. We walked up to the gates, which remained open until we came within a yard of them, when they were slammed in our faces by a number of young men.”.

A sympathetic student emerged from the hall; he opened the gate and ushered the women inside. They took their examination and passed with flying colours. Although both passed, university regulations only allowed medical degrees to be given to men. The British Medical Association therefore refused to register the women as doctors.

Jex-Blake took herself off to Ireland where she finally obtained her licence to practice from the Dublin College of Physicians. Sophia Jex-Blake then devoted her life to the cause of women in medicine - both improving the treatment of female patients and creating better opportunities for female medical education, eventually founding the revolutionary Edinburgh School of Medicine for Women.

Their strength and decency under pressure went on to inspire many others, right up to the present day. Although Jex-Blake and Petchey were the most famous and seem to get most of the plaudits, There were other women and they are collectively known as The Edinburgh Seven, the others were Mary Anderson, Emily Bovell, Matilda Chaplin, Helen Evans and Isabel Thorne.

Jex-Blake seems to have been the most successful of the seven, in June 1878 she opened a medical practice at 4 Manor Place; three months later she established a dispensary (an out-patient clinic) for impoverished women at 73 Grove Street, just round the corner from where I used to stay at Upper Grove Place. These ventures were highly successful but after the death of one of her assistants, she suffered from depression. She closed her practice and left the dispensary in the care of her medical colleagues.

She remained inactive for a time before opening Edinburgh School of Medicine for Women in 1887, in its second year the school was disrupted by disputes between Jex-Blake and several of the students who resented her imposition of strict rules of conduct. The school also struggled financially and had to be bailed out by Jex-Blake’s father.

When a rival institution, the Medical College for Women, was opened by Ina Cadell, Grace Cadell, and Elsie Inglis, former students of Jex-Blake, the Edinburgh School of Medicine could no longer compete. The school folded and closed its doors in 1898.

In 1899 Jex-Blake retired but continued to campaign for women’s suffrage until she passed away on 7th January 1912.

The Edinburgh Seven were recognised with posthumous degrees in July 2019, the degrees were collected on their behalf by a group of current students at Edinburgh Medical School. The seven’s efforts eventually forced through legislation in 1877 to ensure women could study at university.

The second pic show Jex-Blake on the left and Pechy on the right then a pic of The Edinburgh Seven, the last pic is a Historic Scotland commemorative plaque to the Edinburgh Seven and the Surgeons’ Hall riot, more of that in a few days.

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Susan First Female Physician

Susan First Female Physician

 Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte, born in 1865 on the Omaha Reservation, is renowned as the “first” of many things. Not only was she the first woman of Native American ancestry to receive a medical degree in the U.S. (and among the first women in general to do so), but she is also considered the first person to receive financial aid for professional education in the U.S. Picotte was a strong…

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Happy national women physicians day to all of the lovely lady docs out there. My grandma got her MD in a day when she wasn’t allowed to attend the boys medical school, where each hospital only had one or two female doctors on staff. Because of her I never doubted my ability to become a physician because of my gender, I never associated being a doctor with being male. According to a 2017 article in JAMA, the patients of women physicians have lower mortality and readmission rates than those of our male colleagues. Despite this fact in the 6 years since I’ve entered medical school I have been told everything from “you don’t look like a doctor” to “your voice is too sing-song-y, if you lowered it people would take you more seriously” to “I’ll wait for the real doctor” to “they let women be doctors now?” So today is for all the women who are working 80 hrs a week while trying to be home in time to put their kids to sleep, for the women who smile and ignore all the times their patients call them the nurse, for all the women who have been told that they would be a better doctor if they were more like a man, because you are strong and brave, and I am proud to stand in your growing numbers and thank all the women who paved the way for us

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Module 3 Blog

The ABCS of Biology

Can you remember the first time you learned about something related to biology? My first exposure to biological sciences was when I was in 1st grade. Our teacher took us outside, and we got to run around the field and play with flowers. This was our teacher’s way of showing us that plants need the sun to grow. Every year from then on, I had some type of “science class”. When I got to high school, it was then called “9th grade biology”, then “AP biology” during my junior year. While each class got increasingly more complex, they still all included the same basic principles, one of which was the concept of DNA. Starting from middle school, I was always told that DNA was made up of adenine (A), thymine (T), cytosine (C), and guanine (G), and it seems like this principle has been tattooed onto my brain ever since. But what if I told you that there has been a new discovery that could change everything we ever thought we knew about biology? Well, several teams across the globe have been delving into the realm of “alien DNA” after the discovery of a new DNA base found in bacteria-invading viruses (bacteriophages) dubbed “Z”.

We are not alone.

Our DNA is composed of small subunits called nucleotides, and they are the ATCG as previously stated. A pairs with T, and C pairs with G, making a spiral ladder-like structure. However, after 40 years since its initial discovery, studies have shown that bacteriophages use a chemical base called 2-aminoadenine (Z) in place of A. This initial finding was made in a lab based in Russia, then known as the Soviet Union, in a type of bacteriophage called cyanophage S-2, but they didn't know why or how this was happening. What they did know was that Z–T pairing was an awful lot stronger than A–T pairing. Considering what we know about the tenets of biology, what made these viruses choose Z over the widely-known A? Was it an evolutionary adaptation to survive in host cells or simply a coincidence? These questions remained elusive until recent breakthroughs helped crack the multi-decade-long code.

Bacteriophage SH-Ab 15497 (shown in this electron micrograph), which infects Acinetobacter baumannii, replaces A with Z in its genome. The letter switch helps the virus evade bacterial enzymes that would destroy the phage’s DNA.Y. HUA ET AL/FRONTIERS IN MICROBIOLOGY 2017

Philippe Marlière and Pierre-Alexandre Kaminski, researchers both based in France, led a team to uncover the truth behind this alien DNA. Once they unveiled the S-2L’s complete genome, they discovered PurZ, an enzyme encoded within the genome that provided instructions on how to make Z. Not only that, much later, they found a gene of even more interest– DpoZ! This gene encoded a polymerase, which is an enzyme that inserts bases into a growing DNA chain, but this particular polymerase has a preference for Z over A. It seems like the missing pieces of this “extraterrestrial” journey are finally coming together.

They come in peace, or… They live in peace?

While it’s easy to assume that the use of Z is something that has arisen in recent decades, the more common belief is that these viruses have a long history on this planet, possibly even being part of Earth’s earliest lifeforms. This would make sense since Z-incorporated DNA would have been best suited for Earth’s earliest atmosphere. In the earliest stages of Earth’s geologic time, the atmosphere actually didn’t have that much free oxygen. Actually, to be honest, the atmosphere wasn’t pleasant at all. Temperatures were insanely high, reaching to about 160ºF (70ºC), and it was filled with a hot mixture of gases like ammonia, methane, and gaseous neon. Talk about a harsh environment. This correlation is one of the many factors that lead modern-day biologists to believe that Z helped viruses like these bacteriophages thrive under those extreme conditions.

An illustration of early Earth, which may have had a toxic atmosphere like Venus’s today Credit: Shutterstock / Diego Barucco

But I want one!

As far as the evolution of other organisms, there are reasons why Z isn’t shared amongst a wide range of species. While Z–T pairs are more stable due to one extra bond compared to A–T pairs, this increased stability also comes with increased rigidity. Using humans as an example, the process of DNA replication depends on DNA’s ability to be “unzipped”. Remember that the structure of DNA is like a ladder and can be unraveled by breaking the rungs. Z–T pairs would likely disrupt this process due to the extra strength bonding they have. Not only would this stiffness interfere with DNA replication, but it can also affect how our DNA is packaged and condensed during various biological events. Considering we live in an environment that is much more comfortable than what was present during prehistoric times, it seems like our cells just don’t need that quality, which explains why humans never developed it through adaptation and evolution. Changing it now would not necessarily bring on a wide range of benefits either. Because our DNA encodes for many molecules in our bodies such as proteins, tissues, and organelles, altering our DNA’s “alphabet” would cause a whole slew of changes that are just not evolutionarily favorable. Imagine this: you have a fully constructed house that you’ve been living in for the past 20 years with all your desired furniture, wall colors, baseboards, appropriate wiring, the whole nine yards, and it has a wooden framework. Now, let’s say you woke up one day and all of a sudden preferred a metal framework instead, but, here’s the catch: you want everything else to stay the same for the most part. Well, good luck finding a team who will help you out with that. That’s how it would be incorporating the Z nucleotide. Since you’ve been living in that house for 20 years, you clearly don’t need the metal framework. Just as with our DNA, we haven’t needed to replace A with Z, so why do it when it could cost more than it’s worth?

However, while changing our DNA may not be the answer, knowing the details of the Z-genome can help scientists with existing therapies. For example, when a bacterium is no longer responds to antibiotics, we now call them “resistant”. Phage therapies utilize bacteriophages to treat these types of bacteria when medications won’t do the job. The Z-genome could also progress gene therapy. Since Z is far more robust than its A analog, it can be used to increase the longevity and targeting capability of the DNA strands used in this process.

Bacteriophages infecting bacteria (illustration) [Christoph Burgstedt/Science Photo Library/Getty Images]

It seems like the Z-genome could be of great use to us one day, but there’s still a lot left for us to figure out about this “alien DNA” and what it could mean for the history and future of our planet’s life forms.

By: Lianna Zhou 11-10-21

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Versatility of Amantadine and Rimantadine for Detection of Cancer_Crimson Publishers

Versatility of Amantadine and Rimantadine for Detection of Cancer by Paramjit S Tappia in Novel Approaches in Cancer Study

Globally, an estimated 9.6 million people died from different types of cancer in 2017; in other words, every sixth death in the world was due to cancer, second only to cardiovascular diseases. The total number of cancer deaths continues to increase. In fact, by 2030, the global burden of cancer is expected to be 21.7 million new cases and 13 million cancer deaths [1]. On Feb 4 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) stated the need to step up cancer services in low and middle-income countries. WHO warned that, if current trends continue, the world will see a 60% increase in cancer cases over the next two decades. The greatest increase (an estimated 81%) in new cases will occur in low- and middle-income countries, where survival rates are currently the lowest [2]. Early detection and diagnosis of cancer can lead to timely therapeutic/surgical interventions that can increase the chances of survival.

For more Open Access Journals in Crimson Publishers please click on: https://crimson-publishers.blogspot.com/2019/10/crimson-publishers-impact-factor.html

For more Articles in Novel Approaches in Cancer Study please click on: https://crimsonpublishers.com/nacs/index.php

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Eye on Cancer

Most cancer deaths are caused by the disease spreading around the body. This process, known as metastasis, happens when cancer cells break away from a tumour and get into the bloodstream. To find out more about how this happens, researchers are using cutting-edge microscopy techniques to spy on cancers as they develop over time. This eye-like image shows a breast tumour under the skin of a mouse, with new blood vessels (orange) growing into it. The tumour is also surrounded by cells called fibroblasts (green), which produce a sticky molecule called endosialin on their surface. Although the exact function of endosialin isn’t known, it’s thought to help breakaway cancer cells enter the newly-formed blood vessels and start spreading throughout the body. Because endosialin is produced in the very earliest stages of tumour growth, finding new drugs that stop it from working could prevent cancer from spreading in the first place.

Written by Kat Arney

Shortlisted image by Sarah Ash, ICR Molecular Cell Biology Team, Division of Breast Cancer Research

The Institute of Cancer Research, Kensington, London, UK

Image copyright held by the photographer

ICR Science and Medical Imaging Competition, 2021

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It’s like they don’t even care!

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Day 18 of Black History Month and I’m honoring Henrietta Lacks. She was an African-American woman whose cancer cells are the source of the HeLa cell line, the first immortalized human cell line and one of the most important cell lines in medical research.

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Module 2 Blog

“Biases show up in the science classroom in many forms, in which historical figures we talk about, which histories we tell about them, which we leave out." -Emily Whalen, UNH

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Henrietta Lacks in the 1940s. (Credit: Lacks Family, via The Henrietta Lacks Foundation)

I was in the 10th grade when I read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot as part of our summer reading. I typically didn’t have much interest or care in the books our school chose, but this one was different. In fact, it gave me my very first spark of interest in medicine. It not only discussed the HeLa Cell Line and how it came to be, but it also highlighted the life and devastating death of Henrietta Lacks. Skloot documented Lacks’ life beyond the hospitals and cancer and helped portray her as an African American woman who had a beautiful life and a loving family but was treated so unfairly at her end. After reading the novel, I couldn’t help but feel immense secondhand guilt about how she was viewed during her treatment for cervical cancer, especially since it was a testament to the apparent racial inequality in the medical field at that time. I appreciate though that her surviving family and descendants can appreciate how much the HeLa Cell Line has done for the medical and scientific communities and that it has paved the way for so much progress. While it is one of the most common cell lines in research today, one of which I have dealt with and used myself, the contributions won’t ever take away from what happened to Henrietta Lacks all those years ago.

Rana Zoe Mungin: The history continues into the present.

Rana Zoe Mungin, a 30-year-old teacher from Brooklyn, New York, is pictured during a trip to the Grand Canyon in Arizona in 2018.

Lacks’ story took place in the 1940s to 1950s, and we can think of it as a piece of history. However, instances of medical inequality towards African Americans still occur today in the 2020s. Rana Zoe Mungin was a 30-year old middle school social studies teacher who passed away in April 2020 due to COVID-19 complications after being denied testing twice. She made several 911 calls and hospital visits voicing her concerns about her inability to breathe and her fear that she may have contracted the virus. However, instead of getting tested immediately amid the pandemic and being offered appropriate treatment, she had been turned away by several medical professionals telling her that she suffered from asthma or a panic attack, on two separate occasions. She passed shortly after she was hospitalized and placed on a ventilator.

Unfortunately, this type of improper evaluation and diagnosis has been seen on numerous occasions, not just with Mungin. Who could forget tennis star Serena Williams and her brush with death shortly after the birth of her daughter Olympia? After the emergency C-section, Williams suspected she had clots and requested for a CT scan and a heparin drip (Heparin is a common blood-thinner administered to individuals who have a history of clots). The nurse assumed that the postpartum medication had made Williams confused, so Williams’ doctor only performed an ultrasound to which he found nothing of the sort. After Williams’ repeated demand for a CT rather than an ultrasound, doctors discovered several clots in her lungs and began treatment immediately. This brought on further complications such as reopening of her C-section wound due to intense clot-induced coughing, an operation to remove the clots, and discovery of a hematoma (clotted blood within the tissues) in her abdomen, all of which prolonged her hospitalization. While postpartum depression is common in many women, Williams stated that that experience intensified hers and that for six weeks, she didn’t even want to get out of bed.

Medical Racism: A Need for a Multi-faceted Solution

This type of treatment occurs quite frequently in the African American community, and Mungin and Williams are just two of many. It shouldn’t take a young woman's death and a celebrity’s story to emphasize the severity of these types of situations.

This problem involves a multitude of disciplines, not just medicine or science. It represents a deep-rooted societal problem with social, economic, and racial elements. In order to tackle the issue of racism in medicine, we should focus on the factors that got them there in the first place. This may include investments to improve the living and environmental conditions of lower-income neighborhoods where the majority of this population resides. On the professional side, there should be an emphasis on anti-racial practices in medical education and training as well.

Statistics

I encourage you to visit this website that breaks down the inequality that is within our healthcare system right now. These numbers represent human lives. Lives that deserve better than what is given to them now. While I have mainly discussed issues revolving around the treatment of African Americans, this problem persists in other minority groups as well whether it be based on race, sexuality, religion, gender, or age. It seems that the creation of the HeLa Cell Line can change the course of medicine in ways more important than its current scientific purposes.

"But maybe I’ll come back as some HeLa cells like my mother, that way we can do good together out there in the world." -Deborah Lacks, Henrietta Lacks’ daughter, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

By: Lianna Zhou 10-21-21

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Module 1 Blog

Waves of signaling in this embryoid — stronger signals in red and yellow, and weaker in blue — prompt cells to differentiate. Credit: Idse Heemskerk and Aryeh Warmflash, Rice University

You know of the 5-second rule, but do you know about the "14-Day Rule"? Why are people trying to get rid of it?

Let's take a look.

Nature has recently published several articles stating the lift of the in-famous “14-Day Rule” within the embryonic research community. The “14-Day Rule” was an international consensus that prohibited the laboratory culture and growth of human embryos 14 days post-fertilization. It was first proposed in 1979 when the laboratories discovered a way to maintain a human embryo outside of the human body for the first time. The law was not firmly established by the International Society of Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) until 2006. However, shortly after its establishment, it was rarely ever implemented as laboratory techniques had not been well-developed enough to support a human embryo for more than a few days. It was not until 2016 when the labs of Ali Brivanlou and Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz reported that they could successfully grow human embryos day 12 or 13 post-fertilization. This rejuvenated the debate of extending the “life” of human embryos for longer studies, now with proof of technological advancements.

Hear me out.

Though I respect the perspectives of both parties, I support the lift of the “14-Day Rule”. First, one of the main arguments in the mix right now is the concern that the public never got a say in whether the “14-Day Rule” should be lifted. Some parties say that not involving the public could result in backlash and distrust towards the research community while others say that the debate should remain amongst experts and credible people within the field. I agree with the latter. I believe involving the public would create a polarizing debate in individuals that are not familiar with the entire picture. We have all seen how misconstrued scientific information can get with examples regarding the safety of the COVID-19 vaccine or the valid need for abortions. While I understand this matter is about ethics versus science, it is still important to maintain a good footing in both, to which I’m implying that the chance of the public disregarding and dismissing the scientific portion altogether. As with niches in any field, it would be difficult for the layperson to develop a full-fledged understanding of all the pros and cons.

Next, we should discuss the topic of justification for moving forward with the “14-Day Rule” lift. The research community is often held back by certain limitations that put it through a vicious cycle, a cycle that all of us can relate to in one form or another. In order to get funding and support, you need to have evidence to support why you want to break a type of boundary. However, to get evidence, you need support and the green light to do the research you have your mind set on, but to get support, you need promising data to show what could be. This cycle goes on and on. Thinking about this in terms of getting a job as a recent college graduate, a scenario we are all familiar with. In order to get a job, you need experience, but to get experience, you need to find a job. Being someone who is currently in the research field, albeit in the beginning stages, I have already seen how frustrating it can be when you are possibly on the brink of discovery but are held back by conservative regulations. While I see the argument for the need of a new “X-day” limit, I believe that at this point with the breakthroughs that are in store, it’s hard to put forth another hard boundary. As the article by Nature states, the findings from studies involving human embryos past the 14-day mark could lead scientists one step closer to finding the source of failed pregnancies, congenital heart defects, and a myriad of other health issues associated with embryo and fetal development that continue to allude us. We also must keep in mind that ISSCR and several other institutions are also placing strict guidelines and observations upon the laboratories that are allowed to carry out these experiments, which I feel is a fair way of treading lightly.

At four weeks an embryo’s organs are forming and it has a heartbeat, but it does not have functioning neural connections or sensory systems © Alamy

In a nutshell.

I must note that I still appreciate and respect the reasons for having rules and policies in place; otherwise, unethical practices would be at work, which jeopardizes the integrity of the field. However, there are also times when changes must occur, when a new era is born with its own set of ethics that could not even have been thought of 50-100 years ago. I mean, we can look at modern-day examples of Drs. Andrew Petros and Phil Hajduk, who broke the boundaries and established assumptions within their field to make profound breakthroughs regarding apoptosis, a form of programmed cell death. Seeing what they were able to accomplish with a newly developed technology and alternate modes of discovery, imagine what can occur for the future of embryonic research.

By: Lianna Zhou 9-23-21

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Science and everyday life cannot and should not be separated.

Rosalind Franklin

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some more microscopic tissue samples! (from the top) skin, ovaries, cartilage, and kidneys

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Stem Cell Fates

Neural stem cells in the developing brain don’t divide equally. One daughter cell is destined to become a neuron, the other remains a stem cell producing more daughters. To understand how this polarity of cell fate occurs, scientists turn to model organisms such as the fruit fly, a neural stem cell of which is shown here– the large cell on the right – with its progeny blebbing out to the left. The researchers who took this photo, which is falsely coloured, used a super-resolution form of imaging called spinning-disk confocal microscopy, ideal for observing the details of living cells. They studied the dynamics of cell membrane factors (orange) showing that their distribution changes over the course of the cell cycle and reflects the establishment of polarity prior to division. Understanding how such polarity and neural fates are established may one day inform efforts to regenerate neurons destroyed by injury or disease.

Written by Ruth Williams

Image from work by Bryce LaFoya and Kenneth E. Prehoda

Institute of Molecular Biology, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, USA

Image copyright held by the original authors

Research published in Cell Reports, May 2021

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It’s not hoarding if you’re a vacuole!