Get the latest tech news

I should have loved biology too

How I went from hating it to being obsessed, the allure of great writing, and a post-scuba-dive moment of clarity

The story of finding that mutation would make a thrilling movie: a young woman named Nancy Wexler, devastated by the news that her mother has been diagnosed with Huntignton’s and that she and her sister would have a 50-50 chance of getting it, decides to devote her life to solving this medical mystery. The public acknowledgment was not a surprise for those close to her – for the last decade, they noticed her gait slowly deteriorate, speech slur, and limbs jerk in random directions, the same characteristics she saw in her mother half a century ago, and in the hundreds of Venezuelan patients she tended to ever since. You’re distinctly aware of each and every moment, mind blank and in awe of the world around you: a large school of Cortez wrasses passing by; a camouflaged octopus hiding under the seabed; a moray eel sticking its neck out of a little hole, an angry look on its face, as if you’ve just disturbed its sleep; the vast, splendid diversity of corals – you can see it living, with little, wavy hand-like appendages collecting bits of floating food to eat, with tiny fish swimming in and out and around, as if playing a game of tag.

Get the Android app