MDC North Premedical & Prepharmacy Student Association

11/09/2025

Her student discovered telomerase on Christmas Day.
But the teacher who made it possible had already rewritten the rules of biology—and almost been fired for it.
In 1984, Elizabeth Blackburn was doing something radical at UC Berkeley: she was letting a 23-year-old graduate student chase what most senior scientists called impossible.
Find an enzyme no one had ever seen. Prove it exists. Change biology.
Most advisors would have steered Carol Greider toward safer research—something publishable, something that wouldn't waste a year of her PhD on a theory that might be wrong.
Elizabeth said: "Go for it."
Because Elizabeth Blackburn knew something about impossible theories.

She was born in 1948 in Hobart, Tasmania—an island at the edge of the world, about as far from the centers of scientific power as you could get.
Her parents weren't scientists. They were family doctors in a small Australian town. But they encouraged curiosity. They let young Elizabeth collect ants, dissect flowers, ask endless questions.
At 16, Elizabeth knew she wanted to study biochemistry—the chemistry of life itself.
She earned her undergraduate degree from the University of Melbourne, then her PhD from Cambridge University in England in 1975. She did postdoctoral work at Yale.
And everywhere she went, she asked questions others weren't asking.
In the late 1970s, while working at Yale, Elizabeth started studying Tetrahymena thermophila—a single-celled freshwater organism, essentially pond scum.
Most molecular biologists studied bacteria or yeast. Tetrahymena seemed like an odd choice.
But Tetrahymena had something unusual: tens of thousands of tiny chromosomes, each with protective caps on their ends.
Elizabeth wanted to understand those caps—the telomeres.
In 1978, she discovered that telomeres in Tetrahymena consisted of a repeated DNA sequence: TTGGGG, over and over again.
Simple. Repetitive. Boring, some said.
Elizabeth thought it was beautiful.
She moved to UC Berkeley in 1978 and continued studying telomeres. She teamed up with Jack Szostak from Harvard Medical School, and together they showed that telomeres weren't unique to pond scum—they existed in yeast, and likely in all organisms.
More importantly, they discovered that telomeres protected chromosomes from degradation. Without telomeres, chromosomes would fray and fall apart, like shoelaces without plastic tips.
But there was a problem: every time a cell divided, its telomeres got a little shorter. Eventually, they'd be too short. The cell would stop dividing. It would age. It would die.
This explained cellular aging—why our cells don't divide forever, why we grow old.
But it raised a new question: if telomeres shorten with every division, why don't they disappear completely? What maintains them?
Elizabeth and Jack hypothesized that some enzyme must be adding DNA back to the telomeres, maintaining their length.
It was just a theory. No one had ever found such an enzyme.
In 1984, a first-year graduate student named Carol Greider joined Elizabeth's lab.
Elizabeth gave her the project: find that enzyme.
Most advisors wouldn't have done this. Give a crucial, career-defining project to a first-year student? Risk years of work on an unproven hypothesis?
But Elizabeth saw something in Carol—curiosity, persistence, independence.
The same qualities Elizabeth had relied on throughout her own career.
"If you were easily intimidated, you wouldn't take on that kind of project," Elizabeth later said. "We had to be both rigorous and enterprising, and those are exactly the characteristics that Carol has."
For nine months, Carol ran experiments. Nothing worked.
Many advisors would have pulled the plug. Redirected the student to something safer.
Elizabeth didn't.
She and Carol worked together, hashing out problems, debating possibilities. Elizabeth would often argue the opposite side of whatever position she actually held—forcing both of them to think harder, test assumptions, consider alternatives.
"We enjoyed hashing out the problems," Carol later said. "We would often end up arguing opposite sides of a debate until each had convinced the other of her side."
Then, on Christmas Day 1984, Carol went to the lab to check an experiment.
And found it: telomerase.
The enzyme that maintains telomeres. The missing piece of the puzzle.
Elizabeth and Carol spent another six months verifying, testing, ruling out alternative explanations. In December 1985, they published in Cell.
Most scientists ignored it. Pond scum, they said. Not relevant to real organisms.
They were spectacularly wrong.
Within a few years, researchers showed that telomerase existed in yeast, mice, humans—everywhere. It was fundamental to how life works.
Elizabeth and Carol had discovered one of biology's most important enzymes.
But Elizabeth's career was about to take a controversial turn.

In 2001, President George W. Bush appointed Elizabeth to the President's Council on Bioethics—a prestigious position advising the government on ethical issues in medicine and research.
Elizabeth took the role seriously. She believed in evidence-based policy. She believed scientists had a responsibility to speak truth, even when it was politically inconvenient.
In 2004, the council was debating stem cell research. The Bush administration opposed it on religious and moral grounds.
Elizabeth looked at the science. She looked at the potential medical benefits. She believed the research should continue, with appropriate ethical safeguards.
She said so. Publicly.
In 2004, she was dismissed from the council—one of only two members removed before their terms ended.
The message was clear: disagree with the administration, and you're out.
Elizabeth could have stayed quiet. Could have kept her prestigious position. Could have avoided controversy.
She chose science over politics. Evidence over expediency.
"I was disappointed," she later said. But she never regretted speaking up.
Because Elizabeth Blackburn had never been good at staying quiet when science was at stake.

In 2009, Elizabeth Blackburn, Carol Greider, and Jack Szostak received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discovery of telomeres and telomerase.
Elizabeth was 61 years old. She'd spent over three decades studying the ends of chromosomes—work that many initially dismissed as niche, irrelevant, unimportant.
She was the first Australian woman to win a Nobel Prize.
At the Nobel ceremony, she thanked her collaborators, her students, her family.
She especially thanked Carol Greider—the student who'd taken on an impossible project and succeeded.
Because that's what great advisors do: they see potential in others, give them challenging problems, support them through failures, and celebrate their successes.
Today, Elizabeth is in her mid-70s and still active in science. She's a professor at UC San Francisco, where she moved in 1990.
She continues to study telomeres and their role in aging, cancer, and stress.
She's published over 300 papers. She's mentored dozens of students and postdocs, many of whom have gone on to brilliant careers.
She's received countless awards beyond the Nobel: the Albert Lasker Award, the L'Oréal-UNESCO Award for Women in Science, election to the National Academy of Sciences.
But perhaps her most important legacy isn't the awards or the discoveries.
It's the students.
Carol Greider, who discovered telomerase and went on to win her own Nobel Prize.
And dozens of others who learned from Elizabeth not just how to do science, but how to think about science:
Be curious about things others dismiss.
Ask fundamental questions.
Don't be afraid of difficult projects.
Support your students' independence.
Stand up for scientific integrity, even when it's politically costly.
Science isn't just about discoveries—it's about the people who make them possible.

In interviews, people often ask Carol Greider about the Christmas Day discovery.
She always mentions Elizabeth.
"Liz's excitement about telomeres was very contagious," Carol has said. "That's why I went to Berkeley and ended up in her lab."
Elizabeth gave Carol the freedom to work independently. The support to persist through nine months of failed experiments. The intellectual partnership to think through problems together.
And when Carol succeeded, Elizabeth made sure she got credit—not as "Blackburn's student," but as a scientist in her own right.
That's mentorship at its finest.

There's a pattern in science: great discoveries often come from great advisor-student relationships.
Not advisors who micromanage. Not advisors who take credit for their students' work. Not advisors who play it safe.
But advisors who see potential, give challenging projects, provide support without controlling, and celebrate students' independence.
Elizabeth Blackburn exemplifies this.
She could have given Carol a safe, incremental project. She gave her a shot at something transformative.
She could have pulled the plug after nine months of nothing. She kept the faith.
She could have been the senior author who got all the credit. She shared it equally.
She could have stayed quiet about stem cell research. She spoke up and paid the price.
Because for Elizabeth Blackburn, science has always been about more than personal advancement.
It's about curiosity. About understanding. About integrity.
And about empowering the next generation to ask even bigger questions.
Her student discovered telomerase on Christmas Day. But the teacher who made it possible had already rewritten the rules of biology—and almost been fired for it.
Sometimes the greatest discoveries aren't made by lone geniuses—they're made by brilliant partnerships between teachers who dare to give impossible projects and students brave enough to try them.
Elizabeth Blackburn proved that great science requires great mentorship. And that standing up for scientific integrity matters more than keeping prestigious positions.

11/09/2025

Christmas Day, 1984.
A 23-year-old grad student went to the lab to check her experiment.
What she found would win the Nobel Prize—and rewrite biology.
Most people spend Christmas Day with family or friends, opening presents, eating too much, enjoying the one day when the world slows down.
Carol Greider spent hers in a laboratory—chasing the smallest secret of life.
It was 1984 at the University of California, Berkeley. Carol was in her first year of graduate school, working under molecular biologist Elizabeth Blackburn, studying chromosomes—the threadlike structures made of DNA that carry our genetic information.
Specifically, they were studying telomeres: the protective caps at the ends of chromosomes, like the plastic tips on shoelaces that keep them from fraying.
Scientists knew telomeres existed. They knew telomeres shortened every time a cell divided—DNA replication couldn't quite reach the very ends of chromosomes, so a little bit got lost each time.
Eventually, after enough divisions, telomeres would become too short. The cell would stop dividing. It would age. It would die.
This explained cellular aging. It explained why our cells don't divide forever.
But there was a problem: some cells' telomeres didn't shorten. Some cells seemed to maintain their telomere length indefinitely.
How?
Elizabeth Blackburn and Jack Szostak hypothesized that some unknown enzyme must be adding DNA back to the telomeres, maintaining their length, preventing them from wearing down.
In April 1984, Carol Greider joined Blackburn's lab with a mission: find that enzyme.
It was a daunting assignment. "If you were easily intimidated, you wouldn't take on that kind of project," Blackburn later said. "We had to be both rigorous and enterprising, and those are exactly the characteristics that Carol has."
Carol wasn't easily intimidated.
She chose to work with Tetrahymena thermophila, a freshwater single-celled organism—pond scum, essentially. But pond scum with a statistical advantage: each Tetrahymena cell contains about 40,000 mini-chromosomes, compared to the 23 pairs in human cells.
More chromosomes meant more telomeres. More telomeres meant more enzyme to detect.
For nine months, Carol worked 12-hour days, running experiment after experiment.
She would extract material from Tetrahymena cells, add synthetic telomere-like DNA sequences, and test whether anything in the extract could lengthen those sequences.
Night after night, she developed gels—thin sheets where DNA separates into visible bands under certain conditions—looking for the characteristic pattern that would indicate telomere extension.
Nothing.
Month after month: nothing.
She tried different substrates. Different assays. Different approaches.
Still nothing.
Carol later said people assumed she was working on Christmas because she was a "nose-to-the-grindstone person"—someone obsessively dedicated to work above all else.
That wasn't quite right.
She was in the lab on December 25, 1984, because she'd started an experiment before the holiday, and gels take time to develop. You can't pause them. You can't wait until a more convenient day.
Science doesn't care about calendars.
So on that quiet Christmas morning, while families opened presents and ate breakfast, Carol Greider walked into an empty lab at UC Berkeley to check her experiment.
She developed her gel.
And there it was.
A faint band. A ladder pattern. Exactly where there shouldn't have been one.
The characteristic repeating sequence: TTGGGG, TTGGGG, TTGGGG.
Telomeric DNA was being added. Something in the extract was lengthening the telomeres.
It wasn't contamination. It wasn't an error. It wasn't one of the known DNA-copying enzymes fooling them.
It was something new.
Carol had found it: the enzyme that maintains telomeres.
She went home and danced—to Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA," according to one account. Pure joy, pure relief, pure excitement at finally seeing what she'd been looking for.
But one positive result wasn't enough. Science requires verification, replication, ruling out alternative explanations.
For the next six months, Carol ran more experiments. Different controls. Different tests. Making absolutely certain.
In June 1985—six months after that Christmas Day discovery—Carol and Elizabeth finally had the persuasive experiment that confirmed it beyond doubt. They'd found a new enzyme.
They needed to name it.
Initially, they called it "Tetrahymena telomere terminal transferase"—a mouthful that accurately described what it did.
A friend jokingly suggested shortening it: just combine "telomere" and "transferase."
The name stuck: telomerase.
In December 1985, Carol Greider and Elizabeth Blackburn published their findings in Cell, one of the most prestigious journals in molecular biology.
Most scientists ignored it.
The study involved "a funny little organism"—Tetrahymena, that pond scum. Other researchers thought the findings wouldn't be relevant to their work on yeast, mice, or humans.
They were wrong.
Within a few years, other researchers showed that yeast and human chromosomes also had telomeres with repeated sequences. Suddenly, everyone paid attention.
Carol Greider had discovered something fundamental about how life works.
Over the next several years, she continued studying telomerase. She showed it contains both RNA and protein. She demonstrated how it uses an RNA template to add the correct DNA sequence to telomeres. She proved it was processive—meaning it could add multiple repeats in one go.
And crucially, working with Calvin Harley, she showed that cancer cells activate telomerase, allowing them to bypass normal cellular aging and divide indefinitely—becoming immortal.
This explained a fundamental mystery of cancer: how tumor cells escape the normal limits on cell division.
It also opened possibilities for cancer treatment: if you could block telomerase in cancer cells, you might be able to stop them from dividing.
Carol earned her PhD in 1987 and moved to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, where she was given the rare opportunity to run her own independent lab as a Cold Spring Harbor Fellow.
She continued studying telomeres and telomerase for decades, making discovery after discovery about how they work and what happens when they don't.
In 2006, Carol Greider, Elizabeth Blackburn, and Jack Szostak received the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research—often considered a precursor to the Nobel Prize.
Then, on October 5, 2009, at 5 AM, Carol was folding laundry at her home in Baltimore when the phone rang.
Stockholm.
She'd won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, along with Blackburn and Szostak, for their discovery of "how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase."
At the press conference, Carol brought her two children with her. Being a mother was important to her—she'd fought to establish childcare facilities at Cold Spring Harbor when she was pregnant.
When asked about the Christmas Day discovery 25 years earlier, Carol said she had no idea the work would change science.
"We had no idea when we started this work that telomerase would be involved in cancer," she said. "We were simply curious about how chromosomes stayed intact."
That's the truth about many great discoveries: they don't begin with a grand plan to cure disease or win prizes.
They begin with curiosity. With wanting to understand how something works. With asking: what's happening here, and why?
Carol's discovery reshaped entire fields of research:
Aging research: Telomere length is now understood to be linked to aging in many organisms.
Cancer biology: Most cancer cells activate telomerase; blocking it is being explored as a treatment strategy.
Degenerative diseases: Some inherited diseases are caused by telomerase defects, including certain forms of anemia and lung disease.
Longevity science: Understanding telomeres has opened questions about whether manipulating them could extend lifespan.
Today, about 1,000 papers are published each year with "telomerase" in the title. Carol can't keep up with them all—the field she helped create has grown far beyond what one person can track.
But it all traces back to that Christmas morning in 1984.
A 23-year-old graduate student. An empty lab. A gel that showed something unexpected.
A discovery born not of luck, but of nine months of persistent work, of checking experiments on holidays, of refusing to give up when nothing worked.
Carol Greider later overcame dyslexia to become one of the most important scientists of our time. She proved that persistence and creativity matter more than fitting conventional molds.
She's now the Director of Molecular Biology and Genetics at Johns Hopkins University. She continues to study telomeres, continues to make discoveries, continues to answer fundamental questions about life.
And it all started on Christmas Day, 1984—when one person stayed curious while the world was celebrating.
Christmas Day, 1984. A 23-year-old grad student went to the lab to check her experiment. What she found would win the Nobel Prize—and rewrite biology.
Maybe that's the truth about discovery—it often begins not with fame, but with one person staying curious when the world is asleep.

11/04/2025

The medical doctor whose clever mind saved thousands from dying at the concentration camps !

He injected thousands with fake disease—and the N***s never realized they were quarantining healthy people from death camps.
Poland, 1941. The N**i occupation had transformed the country into a landscape of terror. Jews rounded up and herded into ghettos before deportation to camps. Polish intellectuals executed. Resisters tortured. Every day brought new horrors, new disappearances, new reasons to fear.
In the small town of Rozwadów, 28-year-old Dr. Eugeniusz Lazowski treated patients under impossible conditions—scarce supplies, almost no medicine, constant German surveillance. He'd already watched friends executed, Jewish neighbors deported, families destroyed.
Then a desperate Jewish friend came to him: the N***s were planning to liquidate his village. Was there any way to avoid deportation?
Lazowski considered what terrified even the ruthless SS. They seemed fearless in their brutality, unstoppable in their cruelty. But there was one thing that made them hesitate: epidemic disease.
The Germans were paranoid about typhus—a bacterial infection spread by lice that killed quickly and spread rapidly through crowded conditions. During World War I, typhus had killed millions. N**i command had strict protocols: quarantine infected areas, avoid all contact, let no one in or out.
Lazowski had an idea. Crazy, dangerous, brilliant.
What if he could fake a typhus outbreak?
He contacted his friend Dr. Stanisław Matulewicz, who had been studying the Weil-Felix test—the standard diagnostic for typhus. The test detected antibodies the body produced responding to typhus bacteria.
But Matulewicz had discovered something remarkable: a completely harmless bacteria called Proteus OX19 triggered the exact same antibody response.
Inject someone with dead Proteus OX19 bacteria, and they would test positive for typhus—while being perfectly healthy.
The two doctors looked at each other. This could work. This could save lives.
This could also get them killed.
They started small. Late 1941, Lazowski injected a few Polish patients with the dead bacteria. Within days, when tested by German medical authorities, they showed positive for typhus.
The Germans immediately quarantined the area around Rozwadów.
It worked.
The Germans, terrified of outbreak, declared the region infected and prohibited their soldiers from entering. No German doctors examined patients personally—they simply trusted test results and stayed away.
No deportations occurred in quarantined zones.
Lazowski and Matulewicz realized they'd found a weapon.
For the next three years, they ran a secret operation. When word spread that N***s were planning deportation in a nearby village, someone would get word to Lazowski. He'd travel there, often at night, with vials of harmless bacteria hidden in his medical bag.
He'd inject dozens, sometimes hundreds—Jews hiding in villages, Polish families at risk, anyone needing protection. Within a week, German medical teams would test the population, find widespread "typhus," and declare quarantine.
Germans would mark the area on maps with red circles and stay away.
To maintain the illusion, Lazowski had to be strategic. He couldn't create too many outbreaks or patterns would look suspicious. He had to spread "infections" realistically—concentrating them in specific villages, creating apparent "transmission chains" following normal disease patterns.
He forged medical records showing disease progression. He trained local nurses how to describe typhus symptoms to German inspectors. He created fake patient histories.
It was elaborate performance art that had to be perfect every single time—because one mistake meant death.
The risks were enormous. If Germans discovered the deception, Lazowski and Matulewicz would be executed immediately, along with their families and probably everyone they'd "infected." If a German doctor actually examined a "typhus patient" closely, healthy appearance would expose the ruse.
But the Germans' own paranoia protected the scheme. They were so terrified of typhus they avoided close contact with infected areas. They accepted test results from distance and stayed away.
For three years, Lazowski and Matulewicz maintained the phantom epidemic. Villages around Rozwadów and in the Łańcut region became known as typhus zones—areas N***s marked on maps but never entered.
Approximately 8,000 people—Jews and Poles—lived in these "infected" areas, protected by disease that didn't exist.
Some people lived in quarantine zones for years, working farms, raising children, living relatively normal lives while surrounded by war that should have killed them. They'd watch German patrols stop at village boundaries, check maps, and turn around.
The invisible disease was their shield.
By 1944, the Soviet army advanced from the east. Germans began retreating from Poland.
The fake epidemic had lasted just long enough.
After the war, Lazowski and Matulewicz said nothing about what they'd done. It was too dangerous—Poland was now under Soviet control, and Communists were suspicious of anyone who'd survived through cleverness rather than joining partisans. Drawing attention could lead to collaboration accusations.
Lazowski emigrated to the United States in 1958, settling in Chicago and working as a doctor. For decades, he never spoke about the fake typhus epidemic.
Not until the 1970s did the story begin emerging. A researcher interviewing Holocaust survivors heard whispers about "the doctor who created the disease that saved us." Eventually, the trail led to Lazowski, who was finally convinced to tell what happened.
He was in his sixties then, a quiet man working at a hospital, taking the bus to work, living an unremarkable American life. When he finally explained what he'd done during the war, people could barely believe it.
He'd saved thousands using nothing but fake disease, clever science, and extraordinary courage.
In 2000, Lazowski was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. He received Israel's Righteous Among the Nations honor. Medical schools began teaching his story as example of ethical courage.
When asked about his actions, Lazowski was characteristically modest: "I didn't do anything special. I just did what I could with what I had."
What he had was medical knowledge and moral courage.
What he did was save 8,000 lives.
Think about the audacity of this plan. Lazowski wasn't creating real resistance infrastructure—no weapons, no safe houses, no escape routes. He was creating an illusion so convincing that the N***s themselves enforced the protection.
He turned German paranoia into a weapon against them. Their fear of disease became a shield for those they wanted to murder.
It required understanding your enemy's psychology. The N***s were brutal but not stupid—they'd see through crude deceptions. The fake epidemic had to be believable: realistic spread patterns, proper medical documentation, trained people who could describe symptoms convincingly.
It required nerves of steel. Every injection, every forged document, every trained nurse was a risk. One nervous mistake, one suspicious German doctor, one person who talked—and the entire scheme would collapse, killing everyone involved.
And it required sustained courage over years. Not one heroic moment, but three years of constant danger, constant deception, constant fear of discovery.
Lazowski didn't just save lives once. He saved them continuously, day after day, injection after injection, forged document after forged document, maintained lie after maintained lie.
For three years.
The people living in those quarantine zones knew they were healthy. They knew the disease was fake. They understood they were part of an elaborate deception that kept them alive.
Imagine living that way: appearing sick to Germans while living normal lives when they weren't watching. Teaching children to cough convincingly if Germans approached. Maintaining the performance constantly because dropping it meant death.
Entire communities participated in sustained theater where the stage was their village and the audience was an army that would kill them if the performance failed.
And it never failed. For three years.
Dr. Eugeniusz Lazowski died in 2006 at age 92, in Eugene, Oregon (he'd moved there and coincidentally lived in a town with the American version of his name—Eugene/Eugeniusz).
His obituary appeared in major newspapers worldwide, finally giving him recognition that had eluded him for sixty years.
Today, his story is taught in medical schools as example of how doctors can use knowledge to resist tyranny. It's cited in discussions of medical ethics, creative problem-solving, and moral courage.
Because Dr. Lazowski proved something important: you don't need an army to fight evil. Sometimes all you need is a vial of harmless bacteria, clever understanding of your enemy's fears, and courage to risk everything.
He weaponized science against tyranny.
He turned a diagnostic test into a shield.
He created disease to cure injustice.
And 8,000 people lived because of it.
Their children lived. Their grandchildren live today. Entire family trees exist because one doctor realized that sometimes the best way to fight evil isn't confrontation—it's deception so brilliant your enemy enforces your protection while thinking they're protecting themselves.
The N***s thought they were avoiding typhus.
They were actually avoiding justice for their intended victims.
And they never realized the disease they feared didn't exist.
That might be the most satisfying part of this story: the N***s were completely fooled. Their own paranoia, their own protocols, their own fear—all turned against them by one doctor with a vial of harmless bacteria.
Dr. Lazowski didn't overpower evil. He outsmarted it.
And 8,000 people—and their tens of thousands of descendants—exist because he did.

10/20/2025

10/16/2025

10/15/2025

Follow your dreams !!