Lab vs. Clinic

I came here this summer in an effort to get a little experience with basic lab techniques and procedures. Monday was my first day, and I first met with Flor, the post-doc who is the day-to-day manager of the lab. She gave me an outline of an idea for a feasible project I could carry out this summer, and sent me off with a bunch of articles to read. She and Fernando recently got a bunch of press over an article they published in Pediatrics showing that among high risk infants, breast-feeding was much more effective in protecting girls against severe respiratory infection than boys. Flor suggested I could design a short study comparing of the protective effect of different durations of breast-feeding on lung infection in mice pups.

Later that morning, Fernando met with all the junior people in the lab (including me) to enumerate all the current projects and ensure that the distribution of the work makes sense. During the meeting he suggested I could look at particular receptors in the lungs of young mice (specifically estrogen and muscarine receptors) that may be responsible for the differential reaction of girls and boys to breast milk. I start reading and feel a little overwhelmed by all the basic science and lab techniques I will need to learn to make this happen in the two months I am here. Not even quite sure where to start. Yet I felt reassured that no matter which project I do or whether or not I get interesting results, I will walk away from here knowing vastly more about the lab and basic science research than I did on arrival.

Fast forward to today--Fernando comes in to talk to me and the two other American students (Yamini just finished her 1st year at Vanderbilt Med, and Gretchen is about to start her senior year at Georgetown) to share a side project with us: maybe the controversy over the connection between breast-feeding and asthma can be explained by gender? Think about it. Then he comes back 15 minutes later with a simple way of potentially answering this question using some medical files he has access to here. Fernando walks out of the room and I'm thinking--I can wrap my head around this! The mention of this project gets my wheels turning--this feels comfortable. Yes, let's make this study happen! Gretchen, on the other hand (a molecular bio major), expresses to me and Yamini how unfamiliar clinical studies are to her, and we felt consoled in having each other to lean on. My instinct is to take the clinical project and run with it, but it could crumble and fall tomorrow. A lab project could be educational, but maybe it's silly to force myself into that project when there's a perfectly good clinical study staring me in the face. Time will tell, and much of this decision is out of my hands, but it has left me pondering.