The Image of Science

Though my mother is an entomologist and my father is a chemist, I grew up with a cartoon portrayal of "science" as a bald man donning a starched white lab coat and goggles in a lab full of gurgling test tubes and spiraling glassware.

When I found that Dartmouth offered science internships to freshmen women, I was overcome with excitement. I loved the idea of having a lab coat of my own and entering an atmosphere of mysterious, brilliantly colored chemicals.

Then I became an intern in Dr. Joyce DeLeo's anesthesiology lab at the Dartmouth- Hitchcock Medical Center, as part of the Women in Science Project (WISP). Two years later, I am still working in her lab, trying to decipher how cytokines—the protein hormones of the immune system—are involved in chronic cancer pain. (Cytokine hormones are like a load of laundry. When the cytokine load is balanced, our immune systems function properly. When the load is unbalanced, our systems send out alarm signals, such as chronic pain.) My job is to find the cytokines that are pushing the immune system off- balance. If we can identify the offending hormones, we may be able to target them with drugs that would alleviate pain without the side effects of opium-based painkillers.

The work is far from my cartoon image of science. Dr. DeLeo is a vibrant young woman and mother, successful and happy with each facet of her life. Her lab equipment is practical and externally non-flashy, but it reveals extraordinary cellular and molecular landscapes that rival any fantasyland: Stained cross-sections of spinal tissue mimic a flock of butterflies. Peripheral nerve tissue branches through skin like a tree against the sky. Then there is the adventure of embarking on a problem to which no one knows the answer. I feel like another Lewis or Clark charting the uncharted as I map the sites where cytokines lodge in small regions of tissue.

The medical research I am doing also has a social context that pleases me: the potential to help millions. Having seen my grandfather suffer through chronic cancer pain, I feel connected to the people my work might one day affect.

Thanks to WISP, I understand now the curiosity that drew my parents to science. I can't imagine a better life.

MICHELLE NICHOLS '98, a

biogenetics and chemistry double -major, plans to become a biomedicalresearcher. This essay isadapted from her winning entryin a contest sponsored by theAmerican Association for the Advancement of Science.