Finding Faith in Science • iBiology

00:00:08:20 - So if you could all grab your Bibles and stand.
00:00:16:12 It says: I will praise thee for I am fearfully
00:00:21:01 and wonderfully made.
00:00:24:07 Thanks be to God for the reading of His words.
00:00:37:10 - Part of being a molecular biologist is
00:00:40:04 like a philosopher of sorts of this is you get
00:00:42:18 you get to really think about inner space.
00:00:48:12 The magnitude of information that's encoded in DNA.
00:00:51:12 It's amazing.
00:00:53:20 And to me it's really spiritual.
00:00:56:21 The science that I do I'm a bit of a unicorn in that sense
00:01:01:17 but a scientist that believes in God right?
00:01:05:03 That was kind of born into it as a kid.
00:01:08:05 My mother was an artist and we didn't have a lot of money.
00:01:14:14 My peers could go to summer camp.
00:01:16:17 We couldn't afford that for me
00:01:18:15 but my grandmother had a stable job
00:01:20:05 as a biologist at the NIH.
00:01:22:21 So my grandmother would take me to lab with her.
00:01:26:00 She did research on small cell lung cancer
00:01:29:06 at the National Cancer Institute for many many years.
00:01:31:17 And she's one of the first African Americans there.
00:01:37:10 I remember my grandmother would take a piece
00:01:40:20 of parafilm and would dot water
00:01:42:10 with food coloring and make me practice my pipetting.
00:01:47:17 So I would spend hours doing that.
00:01:50:12 Oh yeah.
00:01:51:10 The time I was like nine years old
00:01:52:19 I probably had the pipetting skills of like you know
00:01:54:18 a 20 year lab.
00:01:56:05 Cause I've been doing it for a long time.
00:02:19:04 I see the tremendous disconnect
00:02:21:05 between genomic technology and the communities.
00:02:29:00 If you look at the standard publicly available
00:02:31:10 let's say cancer genomic database
00:02:34:08 very heavily homogeneously Caucasian.
00:02:38:20 Probably in the 90 percents or more.
00:02:41:19 Whereas the US population is not that way.
00:02:47:10 - [Interviewer] If a particular group
00:02:49:15 of people isn't represented what's the consequences?
00:02:52:10 - Then that particular group of people presumably
00:02:54:15 is not gonna benefit as much.
00:02:56:00 My goal is to get as many particularly people
00:02:58:23 of color minorities genome sequenced as possible.
00:03:06:02 Every time I'm in the house of the Lord I love to
00:03:08:02 read scripture.
00:03:09:07 So if you all would indulge me I'd like to share two
00:03:12:15 scriptures with you.
00:03:13:22 That that helped me set the framework
00:03:16:09 for what some of the knowledge I'm gonna share.
00:03:20:18 Hosea The Book of Hosea the fourth chapter
00:03:24:09 and the sixth verse:
00:03:26:20 " ""My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge."""
00:03:32:00 I'm gonna share with you today some information
00:03:34:07 about how God made us we're fearfully and wonderfully made.
00:03:38:09 And every as medicine gets much more precise
00:03:41:11 and based on an individual's genetics
00:03:43:11 we're all gonna have to get a lot more genomically literate.
00:03:46:09 The knowledge that I'm gonna share
00:03:49:08 with you today is knowledge that we as a people
00:03:51:11 particularly African Americans cannot afford to lack.
00:03:55:05 It's the knowledge of who we are
00:03:56:23 where we came from and what our health future is.
00:04:07:06 I view science very much as a conversation with nature.
00:04:14:20 And that is a very special.
00:04:16:11 And for me a very spiritual thing.
00:04:21:13 Nature is something in my belief God created.
00:04:29:23 Psalm 1-39 for I am fearfully and
00:04:32:22 wonderfully made.
00:04:36:20 Marvelous are thy works.
00:04:39:21 (inspiring music)
00:04:43:22 There's so much that we don't understand
00:04:54:11 Who knows the essence of things
00:04:55:10 hope for the evidence of things not seen. Faith.
00:05:00:20 One of my conceptualizations of heaven is when we get there
00:05:04:01 we'll get all of the
00:05:05:07 all the answers to all the questions that that we
00:05:08:09 wouldn't have been able to answer as humans.
00:05:16:07 My grandmother recently passed away at the age of 83
00:05:19:01 from triple negative breast cancer.
00:05:25:21 As she you know got her diagnosis I was really
00:05:29:00 asking her to get sequenced so that her nieces would sort
00:05:33:11 of be able to ascertain a bit their risk.
00:05:37:14 And she was very apprehensive to do it.
00:05:40:16 " ""I don't these folks having my DNA"""
00:05:48:23 It was hard cuz it was frustrating
00:05:51:04 cuz I was like grandma you know
00:05:52:11 I was like you're a scientist.
00:05:55:03 You know you've done cancer research.
00:05:57:06 Having your genome sequence was this new technology
00:06:00:00 that even she didn't really understand that well yet
00:06:02:18 but she wound up doing it.
00:06:06:05 You have to understand my grandmother was a black woman
00:06:08:17 first. You know she knew of folks who actually
00:06:12:16 afflicted by the Tuskegee city.
00:06:16:01 They were in her generation; she was born in 1933.
00:06:22:12 Even with her dedication to research still a very
00:06:24:23 robust distrust of the medical establishment.
00:06:32:14 That's where you know folks like me could have a lot
00:06:35:04 of impact.
00:06:40:00 As we get more information
00:06:42:01 about everybody's DNA your medical treatment is gonna get
00:06:45:14 a lot more specific a lot more precise.
00:06:52:21 A woman that was there
00:06:54:12 she might have been in her eighties
00:06:56:02 and she reminded me of my great aunt
00:06:58:08 and she came up and grabbed my hand and said
00:06:59:10 " ""Baby I love the way you described that."""
00:07:02:11 And that really just I mean it really you know
00:07:05:04 I felt really good in that moment.
00:07:07:00 I'm breaking through you know
00:07:09:04 if I can get you know
00:07:10:01 80 year old church-going black women to understand this
00:07:13:19 I'm gonna get the whole community to understand it.
00:07:16:02 And we'll be on better footing as a patient population.
00:07:20:00 So this is a saying
00:07:20:20 I wanna leave you all with. Love thy neighbor love thyself.
00:07:24:17 I was thinking:
00:07:25:13 Know thy genome know thyself.
00:07:29:22 Help thy neighbor's better health.

This Talk

Speaker: Tshaka Cunningham

Audience:

General Public
Educators of H. School / Intro Undergrad
Student
Educators of Adv. Undergrad / Grad
Researcher
Educators

Recorded: January 2018

Talk Overview

Dr. Tshaka Cunningham is a molecular biologist and a Black man of faith. In this short film, the Science Communication Lab explores Dr. Cunningham’s personal and professional identities, and how they unite to help him promote community health through personal genomics.

This short film was produced in partnership with undergraduate biology educators at San Francisco State University and Princeton University. The learning objectives for this film include:

Recognize that scientific thinking is not at odds with spirituality or faith.
Broaden understanding of who can be a scientist.
Examine how a scientist can unite their professional and personal identities, to engage a marginalized community in an authentic way.
A. Examine why people in marginalized communities (like the Black community) might mistrust science and medicine. B. Recognize that even scientists may not trust all scientific research or approaches.
Explain how inclusion of marginalized communities in scientific and medical research, particularly genomics research, could benefit those communities specifically.

Speaker Bio

Tshaka Cunningham

Tshaka Cunningham

Dr. Tshaka Cunningham received his PhD in molecular biology from Rockefeller University and completed postdoctoral training at the Institut Pasteur in Paris. He is the co-founder and CSO of Polaris Genomics, a precision behavioral health company. Dr. Cunningham is a leading advocate for diversity and representation in genomics and is Executive Director of the Faith-Based… Continue Reading

Credits

Executive Producers: Elliot Kirschner, Sarah Goodwin, Shannon Behrman
Producers: Regina Sobel, Brittany Anderton, Meredith DeSalazar
Cinematographers: Derek Reich, Alexis Keenan, Jimmy Purtill, Ryan Maslyn, Josh Weinhaus, Amanda McGrady
Editor: Elizabeth Brooke
Interviews: Adam Bolt
Graphics: Chris George, Maggie Hubbard
Music: Marcus Bagala
Sound: Jonathan Cohen

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