Father of Cancer Genetics, Dr. Henry Lynch, and one of his Protégés, and #cousins!

“Nobody believed me,” Dr. Lynch said. “But I knew we had something here. I knew we could potentially save lives.” (Creighton University)

If you follow my "Mom's Cousin Lenna" story-in-progress via @Freewritehouse, you know I am obsessed with genealogy and shared DNA-- and the way family traditions and distinguishing traits and habits are passed down, so that distant cousins who meet as strangers seem more like siblings. My friend Martha groaned when her mom said, "Oh, you're going to Ireland? Be sure to look up my third cousin Maggie." And so Martha, the dutiful daughter, looked up this total stranger--and the two of them had so much in common, they talked and enjoyed each other's company for hours, like lifelong companions. It's a cousin thing. It's nature as well as nurture. My mom's family is populated with avid gardeners, doctors, lawyers, nurses, teachers, and bricklayers. My dad's side has none of these except maybe the gardening.

But I'm talking about DNA today, and genealogy, and what else it can show us. Because of a six-foot-five fighting Irish lad who served in WWII and won a different kind of battle with skeptics who underestimated him and dismissed his visionary approach to cancer research.

Henry Lynch, celebrated as father of cancer genetics, dies at 91

Obit by Emily Langer

“Henry Lynch occupies a distinguished place in the pantheon of the greatest cancer geneticists of the modern era. He defined the hereditary basis of common human cancers during a period when these views were considered heretical and lived to see the genetic basis of cancers become part of the practice of preventive medicine.”
-- Kenneth Offit, chief of the Clinical Genetics Service at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City

Speaking of the family tree,

My mother's cousin has a daughter who worked as a scribe for Dr. Lynch. She graduated with a high school class of 25, earned an undergraduate degree (not in science), taught with Teach for America for six years in New Orleans, and decided to go to medical school after she saw all the problems with kids and families post-Katrina.

Brilliant AND beautiful

Dr. Lynch died June 2

at a hospice center in Omaha at 91. He spent most of his career at Creighton University in Omaha, where he founded the Hereditary Cancer Center in 1984.

What's so special about this doctor?

When he counseled families with high incidence of cancer, Dr. Lynchsought to assuage their anxieties and fears, emphasizing that early detection of the disease could save their lives. He took phone calls and requests from patients around the world, often reporting to work at 3:30 a.m. for the fullest day of research.

In the 1980s, Dr. Lynch severely injured his back but refused to cancel a scheduled lecture. An assistant rolled him into the classroom on a gurney so he could speak to the students.

A hero,

in so many ways: I am in awe of this man and his accomplishments, his outlook on life, his visionary research and his work ethic, and and and...you get it.

Note: Headers and emphasis are mine, but all quotes are excerpted from Henry Lynch, celebrated as father of cancer genetics, dies at 91

A rough-and-tumble Irish boy, a 6-foot-5 prize fighter, a WWII vet

Born to a “downcast Irish” family, he grew up in a rough-and-tumble neighborhood of New York City and lied about his age to join the Navy when he was 15 or 16.

He served in the South Pacific during World War II

He became a prizefighter known, at 6-foot-5, as “Hammerin’ Hank.”

After obtaining a high school equivalency diploma, he pursued university studies culminating in a medical degree.

A visionary struggling to get people to believe him

Recent research has shown up to 10 percent of cancers to be inherited
Dr. Lynch was a “visionary” with a “sense of something that nobody else [knew].”
But in the critical early years of his career, he often struggled to secure funding for his radical research.

East Coast prejudice against the humble Midwest

He attributed the resistance he encountered at least in part to “the prejudice of major East-coast institutions against a small, mid-western university that challenged the orthodoxy,” David Cantor, a historian of medicine, wrote in the journal Medical History. But whatever its distance from major research institutions, his Nebraska community presented advantages.

How Nebraska saved him

Rural Nebraska families “kept careful records of their kindred” and rarely strayed far from their communities, even over generations...they had what Dr. Lynch called a “deep-seated pioneering tradition and philosophy in support of worthwhile pursuits.”

“Critics may have looked down on Nebraska,” Cantor observed, “but Nebraska was to be the saving of Lynch.”

One man made a world of difference

Dr. Lynch went door to door to locate relatives. He pored over family bibles, medical records, autopsy records and census data. The result of his efforts was one of the world’s largest databases of family cancer histories.

And my fifth-cousin worked with him

as a scribe in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and I know this is hardly Big News or any sort of claim to fame, but I am in awe of cousins and the shared passions that flow through that "River Out of Eden" as Dawkins called it.

Richard Dawkins’ River Out of Eden is a river of DNA that is the true source of life and the one molecule that must be understood if life is to be understood.
--Raymond Bohlin, December 1, 1996, Book Review: River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life

---

Sad to say, I read this book and totally believed the "we are all cousins" chapter. The math has been refuted by some, and I still don't like it. Two people sire offspring. They sire offspring. The 2 parents become 4 grandparents, then 8, then 16, then 32 ancestors and still counting, exponentially, and by that math, the world should be crowded with untold billions of ancestors, but it isn't, because of Overlapping Ancestors, shared grandparents, cousins claiming the same ancestors.

I don't care if it's not true that we are all cousins, if we go back just a few generations.

This book review does not address that. It does address other flaws in the logic of that eminently thinker, Dawkins, and I've been on a mission to get people to read and think for themselves and not take someone else's word for it that some guy said this and meant that.

Raymond Bohlin concludes,

I have tried to point out a few of his inconsistencies, assumptions, and poor logic. What bothers me most is that this is meant to be a popular book. His wit and dogmatism will convince and influence many. For these reasons I found it a frustrating and sometimes maddening book to read. Unfortunately, few will think their way through these pages and will be asking few if any questions of the author along the way. This is where the real danger lies. We must not only show others where he is wrong, but help them how to discover these errors on their own. We must help people to think, not just react.

---

We agree on that.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32275.River_Out_of_Eden