YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS, APRIL 2011
It’s 2 a.m., and I’m alone in the laboratory doing cell culture work. It’s the second time tonight that I’ve been up: I have to dose my lung cancer cells with a novel chemotherapeutic drug according to a strict timeline. As I’m peering into the flasks with a microscope, the tiny red cells remind me of the seeds spilling out of the split-open pomegranates I had been raking in my yard earlier that day. In the quietness, there’s something tugging at my mind, a sense of the strangeness of immortal cell lines, the stark light of the laminar flow hood, and the searing, almost clarifying burn from the Tucson summer sun that has sensitized my skin. When I’m done with the work, I can’t sleep, ...
