Tracing a Translocation's Impact

摘要

Most of us love an underdog's success story. Jessica Wapner's The Philadelphia Chromosome includes several such stories. Wapner, a freelance science writer, describes the path from the first description of a chromosomal abnormality in cancer cells to the successful deployment of a gene-targeted medicine against what had previously been a lethal leukemia. Along the way, she pays homage to various scientific underdogs: a graduate student who spent 10-hour days peering through a microscope for the sheer love of observation; a postdoctoral fellow who risked "the judgment and ridicule of [his] peers"in negating the findings of a world-famous scientist; a junior researcher who doggedly pursued a goal dismissed as unfeasible; a physician who urged a drug company to set aside commercialism for a cure; and, most important, a patient brought back from the brink of death by a new cancer drug.