Cancer cure

Each member of my family, including the newer additions like my brother in law, has the need to verify facts. In the seventies, my cash strapped parents never hesitated to plunk down a hefty wad to buy my sister a set of Encyclopaedia Britannica. And while they were definitely useful for social studies reports, more likely than not it was used to prove who was right after a dinner conversation. For instance, when my parents insisted the Mississippi was the longest river in the world, the Britannica said "the longest river in the world is the Nile or the Amazon." (To their defense their Korean dictionary defined the Mississippi as the longest river in the world.) Or after we watched the movie "Ghandi" and we wanted to verify he actually went to school in England. Or to find out if "El Cid" really existed?But then came the internet. Our lives became incredibly more simplified. So three Christmas's ago when my dad and I argued on the age of Linda Carter, we hopped on the information super highway and discovered that my dad was correct. Now why anyone would care how old Wonder Woman is insane but so is our family.

On occasion, a topic comes up that cannot be verified in the Encyclopedias nor by a Google search. So last night my dad called me:

Dad: Evil Twin #1, what’s goin’ on?

ET#1: Ummmm not much. I am about to eat dinner and watch TV. What’s up? (Understand readers, that my parents have just come back from being in Korea for over a month. I talked to my mother earlier that day to say “Happy Mother’s Day” and she had over an hour’s worth of stories.)

Dad: Okay so I read in the Korean news that professor at Seoul National University found cure for cancer.

ET#1: Ummm. I think I might have missed that one. Are you sure you read correctly?

Dad: Of course. Right, Mom. [Mom in the background confirms she also saw it on the televised Korean news.] Here I’m going to read it to you….

There was a long conversation in which I tried to interpret what my Dad was translating the newspaper article from Korean to English, which was taken from a scientific journal article that initially written in English by Korean people and translated into Korean by journalists.

Unfortunately, I am obsessive compulsive and I spent the rest of the night looking through scientific articles to find this one. I mean I do study cancer and if they these Korean scientist have found a cure I might have to find a new career path, right? Using PubMed and Google normally, it takes me only a few minutes to find an article. However, there was definitely stuff lost in the number of translations and after 4 hours I had to call it quits.

This morning I came into the lab and started my search again. This time I realized I had to stop looking for it scientifically. I typed in “Korean scientist cancer cure Baek.” On the second item that popped up, I found the story featured in the Korean Times and it cited the primary article. Yay, success. I found the article and forwarded it to my Dad. Now, if only I put this much energy in my own work maybe a Korean might actually find the cure for cancer.