[Music]
[Applause]
when I was a kid I had a passion for
digging up old things I would spend full
summers and the long days that made them
up pacing up and down the dusty old
railway tracks in the woods behind my
house I would walk the trail head down
shuffling focus so that I wouldn’t miss
the faint glimmer of a rusting railroad
spike
I loved uncovering those objects
apparently I loved wearing my mask
upside down and I’m grateful that my
parents were patient enough to clean off
all the dust iron that accumulated
through the garage as I cleaned them off
and so here I am today an archeology
student living out that childhood
passion I guess you could say but the
thing with being an archeologist is that
when you go to a party or you introduce
yourself you say I’m studying
archaeology the first thing that they
ask you about is if you know this guy or
if that’s what you do and it’s not so
you may imagine us digging through
ancient pyramids or diving deep beneath
the sea surface to find lost shipwrecks
and while that is certainly what some
archaeologists do it is far from what
most of us do and by no means what I do
in fact I spend most of my time here in
the lab as not as romantic I’ll tell you
that I don’t study artifacts or excavate
ancient ruins I study ancient bones but
okay what do I really mean when I say I
study ancient bones how much is there to
know
well I study paleo pathology paleo
meaning old pathology meaning the study
of disease yet more precisely I study
paleo oncology paleo again meaning old
oncology being the study of cancer
I study ancient cancer and today I want
to share with you what we can learn when
we begin to look deeper one of the
tenants of archaeology is that we never
take anything from the past however
we’re willing to make an exception today
this treasure
rather this perspective will be yours to
keep my journey began here with this
image it was included in a scientific
paper that described the remains of a
two year old child from the northern
peninsula of Newfoundland whom belong to
the maritime archaic culture not only
where the remains more than four
thousand years old but they showed signs
of a disease perhaps cancer that forever
changed the structure of this child’s
skeleton I had known and read about
cases of ancient cancer before but it
was after seeing this image that I knew
I had to know more there simply was more
to know I found myself asking what did
this child experience as this disease
ran through its entire body what did the
community of people experience as this
child slowly weakened eventually
succumbing to a disease they likely had
little understanding of and these
weren’t the only questions I had but I
knew if I were to find any answers I had
to look deeper and so back in that lab
and using a scanning electron microscope
I was able to look 5,000 times deeper
what was great was at this magnification
discoveries just present themselves you
see our bones are a lot like glaciers
they’re dense composed of many different
layers and like our bones seemingly
impenetrable yet they are not
invulnerable when glaciers are exposed
to heat pools of water collect on their
surface and when bones are exposed to
cancer cells called osteoclasts that are
naturally occurring in our body but when
cancer becomes active in the body they
proliferate out of control
and what they do these osteoclasts they
create holes in the bone surface craters
really and these craters look like this
they mimic or mirror those same Glacial
pools and in glaciers what we get are
these called glacial Newlands those
pools of water developed deep into the
glacial core are creating waterfalls and
holes that run all the way throughout
the glacier in bone those cancers
osteoclasts or just as deep leaving
similar patterns of destruction and like
the glacier that drifted over
Newfoundland more than ten thousand
years ago and left rocks like these
called glacial erratics cancer to leaves
a subtle trace of its once immense force
the globules here are called cow cows
fear rights they are balls of calcium
and phosphorus that are excreted by
those osteoclasts in healthy bone
they’re normally recycled but here they
are left behind like a radix on the
tundra as a testament to the great
forces that once shaped this landscape
but it’s easy to spot those boulders as
you drive across the province or to see
an iceberg floating outside the st.
John’s narrow but finding evidence for
ancient cancer even for researchers is
incredibly rare this is because just a
few thousand years ago cancer did not
exist at the same scale as what we see
it today cancer whether we like it or
not is a disease of civilization it is a
result of living longer of exposing
ourselves to the things that come along
with development and technologies what
we see here in this graph is the
expected rate of increase for cancer in
the next 20 years it’s a 70% increase so
what that means is the current number
globally for diagnosis of cancer per
year 14 million will be 22 million by
the time 2022 hits us
what this really means is that it will
be our generation that will compose the
predicted 22 million lives to be
affected by cancer annually so equally
it must be our generation to rise to the
challenge and meet this health crisis
it must be our generation to become the
medical professionals to employ new
innovative solutions to this growing
health challenge we must be ready to
look at and act on cancer in ways that
we have never before but I want us to
know is there a way for us to step
beyond statistics or biology or beyond
the capacity of the naked eye is there
an issue that exists here that is deeper
than what is first sight research
involves us to see things from new
perspectives in my research I’m
exploring a new way of imaging bone in
the third dimension and it’s at this
point in my talk I would invite you all
to put on your 3d glasses as we look at
the next few images and it may take some
time for the bones to invite you in and
to gain that perspective that with time
it seems like the bones only become more
deep you see as archaeologists we are
always concerned with what we find yet
we rarely ask ourselves what’s missing
here well what’s missing here are the
blood vessels bone marrow and the
flowing blood that once filled these now
empty caverns when we take the time to
see what once filled these bones we can
recognize that these bones more than
4,000 years ago housed a human life the
bones were always a person but sometimes
it is a change of perspective that is
required of us to acknowledge that the
scientific work we do is not merely with
specimens
I’ve never lived in a maritime archaic
longhouse I’ve never hunted caribou on
the exposed northern coast nor have I
ever processed harp seal with tools I
had carved from the stones around me and
so when I go to a museum and pull out
trays of artifacts looking at harpoon
heads or the reconstructions of those
long houses it is hard for me to ever
imagine myself in that world but this
world although seemingly more alien it
is perhaps more familiar
I’ve lost loved ones to sickness I faced
health challenges myself we all have and
everyone in this room has experienced
the reality that comes with that
adversity sadness loss anxiety confusion
frustration these are human feelings
they are just as natural as the
biological processes that hurt and heal
us the diseases that affected
individuals throughout history
biologically psychologically and
emotionally still affect individuals
today what we learned through this is
that we do not need to live the same way
of life to share similar experiences of
being we are tied to the maritime
archaic and all people of history in
ways that transcend time and space
so looking deeper does not just require
us to zoom in five thousand times
sometimes it will require us to change
the lens through which we see the world
to see old bones in new ways to hear the
stories that they have to tell I’m not
an expert in this field I’ll be frank
with you I’m just an undergraduate
student but I do know that we are
visitors to this earth and only here for
a fraction of a second it is our
responsibility to unearth these
narratives to create new understandings
and to push forward the boundaries of
human knowledge to help those who are
and those who certainly will face the
adversity that is cancer I didn’t know
it then but I was learning a valuable
life lesson the days I would spend
washing up and down the railroad tracks
in my hometown committing ourselves to
uncovering small pieces of history
whether they are railroad spikes or the
bones of ancient lives allow us to piece
together an understanding of life in the
present with this we must use the past
diva’s perspective on the future and use
the present to effect that positive
change in our world
[Applause]
[Applause]
when I was a kid I had a passion for
digging up old things I would spend full
summers and the long days that made them
up pacing up and down the dusty old
railway tracks in the woods behind my
house I would walk the trail head down
shuffling focus so that I wouldn’t miss
the faint glimmer of a rusting railroad
spike
I loved uncovering those objects
apparently I loved wearing my mask
upside down and I’m grateful that my
parents were patient enough to clean off
all the dust iron that accumulated
through the garage as I cleaned them off
and so here I am today an archeology
student living out that childhood
passion I guess you could say but the
thing with being an archeologist is that
when you go to a party or you introduce
yourself you say I’m studying
archaeology the first thing that they
ask you about is if you know this guy or
if that’s what you do and it’s not so
you may imagine us digging through
ancient pyramids or diving deep beneath
the sea surface to find lost shipwrecks
and while that is certainly what some
archaeologists do it is far from what
most of us do and by no means what I do
in fact I spend most of my time here in
the lab as not as romantic I’ll tell you
that I don’t study artifacts or excavate
ancient ruins I study ancient bones but
okay what do I really mean when I say I
study ancient bones how much is there to
know
well I study paleo pathology paleo
meaning old pathology meaning the study
of disease yet more precisely I study
paleo oncology paleo again meaning old
oncology being the study of cancer
I study ancient cancer and today I want
to share with you what we can learn when
we begin to look deeper one of the
tenants of archaeology is that we never
take anything from the past however
we’re willing to make an exception today
this treasure
rather this perspective will be yours to
keep my journey began here with this
image it was included in a scientific
paper that described the remains of a
two year old child from the northern
peninsula of Newfoundland whom belong to
the maritime archaic culture not only
where the remains more than four
thousand years old but they showed signs
of a disease perhaps cancer that forever
changed the structure of this child’s
skeleton I had known and read about
cases of ancient cancer before but it
was after seeing this image that I knew
I had to know more there simply was more
to know I found myself asking what did
this child experience as this disease
ran through its entire body what did the
community of people experience as this
child slowly weakened eventually
succumbing to a disease they likely had
little understanding of and these
weren’t the only questions I had but I
knew if I were to find any answers I had
to look deeper and so back in that lab
and using a scanning electron microscope
I was able to look 5,000 times deeper
what was great was at this magnification
discoveries just present themselves you
see our bones are a lot like glaciers
they’re dense composed of many different
layers and like our bones seemingly
impenetrable yet they are not
invulnerable when glaciers are exposed
to heat pools of water collect on their
surface and when bones are exposed to
cancer cells called osteoclasts that are
naturally occurring in our body but when
cancer becomes active in the body they
proliferate out of control
and what they do these osteoclasts they
create holes in the bone surface craters
really and these craters look like this
they mimic or mirror those same Glacial
pools and in glaciers what we get are
these called glacial Newlands those
pools of water developed deep into the
glacial core are creating waterfalls and
holes that run all the way throughout
the glacier in bone those cancers
osteoclasts or just as deep leaving
similar patterns of destruction and like
the glacier that drifted over
Newfoundland more than ten thousand
years ago and left rocks like these
called glacial erratics cancer to leaves
a subtle trace of its once immense force
the globules here are called cow cows
fear rights they are balls of calcium
and phosphorus that are excreted by
those osteoclasts in healthy bone
they’re normally recycled but here they
are left behind like a radix on the
tundra as a testament to the great
forces that once shaped this landscape
but it’s easy to spot those boulders as
you drive across the province or to see
an iceberg floating outside the st.
John’s narrow but finding evidence for
ancient cancer even for researchers is
incredibly rare this is because just a
few thousand years ago cancer did not
exist at the same scale as what we see
it today cancer whether we like it or
not is a disease of civilization it is a
result of living longer of exposing
ourselves to the things that come along
with development and technologies what
we see here in this graph is the
expected rate of increase for cancer in
the next 20 years it’s a 70% increase so
what that means is the current number
globally for diagnosis of cancer per
year 14 million will be 22 million by
the time 2022 hits us
what this really means is that it will
be our generation that will compose the
predicted 22 million lives to be
affected by cancer annually so equally
it must be our generation to rise to the
challenge and meet this health crisis
it must be our generation to become the
medical professionals to employ new
innovative solutions to this growing
health challenge we must be ready to
look at and act on cancer in ways that
we have never before but I want us to
know is there a way for us to step
beyond statistics or biology or beyond
the capacity of the naked eye is there
an issue that exists here that is deeper
than what is first sight research
involves us to see things from new
perspectives in my research I’m
exploring a new way of imaging bone in
the third dimension and it’s at this
point in my talk I would invite you all
to put on your 3d glasses as we look at
the next few images and it may take some
time for the bones to invite you in and
to gain that perspective that with time
it seems like the bones only become more
deep you see as archaeologists we are
always concerned with what we find yet
we rarely ask ourselves what’s missing
here well what’s missing here are the
blood vessels bone marrow and the
flowing blood that once filled these now
empty caverns when we take the time to
see what once filled these bones we can
recognize that these bones more than
4,000 years ago housed a human life the
bones were always a person but sometimes
it is a change of perspective that is
required of us to acknowledge that the
scientific work we do is not merely with
specimens
I’ve never lived in a maritime archaic
longhouse I’ve never hunted caribou on
the exposed northern coast nor have I
ever processed harp seal with tools I
had carved from the stones around me and
so when I go to a museum and pull out
trays of artifacts looking at harpoon
heads or the reconstructions of those
long houses it is hard for me to ever
imagine myself in that world but this
world although seemingly more alien it
is perhaps more familiar
I’ve lost loved ones to sickness I faced
health challenges myself we all have and
everyone in this room has experienced
the reality that comes with that
adversity sadness loss anxiety confusion
frustration these are human feelings
they are just as natural as the
biological processes that hurt and heal
us the diseases that affected
individuals throughout history
biologically psychologically and
emotionally still affect individuals
today what we learned through this is
that we do not need to live the same way
of life to share similar experiences of
being we are tied to the maritime
archaic and all people of history in
ways that transcend time and space
so looking deeper does not just require
us to zoom in five thousand times
sometimes it will require us to change
the lens through which we see the world
to see old bones in new ways to hear the
stories that they have to tell I’m not
an expert in this field I’ll be frank
with you I’m just an undergraduate
student but I do know that we are
visitors to this earth and only here for
a fraction of a second it is our
responsibility to unearth these
narratives to create new understandings
and to push forward the boundaries of
human knowledge to help those who are
and those who certainly will face the
adversity that is cancer I didn’t know
it then but I was learning a valuable
life lesson the days I would spend
washing up and down the railroad tracks
in my hometown committing ourselves to
uncovering small pieces of history
whether they are railroad spikes or the
bones of ancient lives allow us to piece
together an understanding of life in the
present with this we must use the past
diva’s perspective on the future and use
the present to effect that positive
change in our world
[Applause]
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