Eva Vertes
Eva Vertes
Eva Vertes Georgeis a Canadian Alzheimer's and cancer researcher and a resident physician in pathology at the University of Florida College of Medicine, where she earned an M.D. degree after attending Princeton University as an undergraduate. She was recognized for her research when she was still a teenager. At 17, she discovered properties of a chemical compound,which stopped the brain cells of fruit flies from dying. This is considered a step towards curing Alzheimer's. She won first prize at BASEF...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScientist
CountryUnited States of America
My grandmother was a chemist. She worked at the Banting Institute in Toronto, and at 44 she died of stomach cancer. I never met my grandmother, but I carry on her name - her exact name, Eva Vertes - and I like to think I carry on her scientific passion, too.
When I was about 9 years old, I became very interested in the human body and diseases. In general, I was just curious about the world around me. I think that any sort of curiosity as a child is a good beginning to a career in science because science, at least to me, is a continuous exploration of the unknown.
Muscle is constantly being used - constantly being damaged. If every time we tore a muscle or every time we stretched a muscle or moved in a wrong way, cancer occurred - I mean, everybody would have cancer almost.
It seems that cancer is a direct result to injury. If you smoke, you damage your lung tissue, and then lung cancer arises. If you drink, you damage your liver, and then liver cancer occurs.
For so long, the mainstays of cancer treatment have been chemotherapy and radiation. They're toxic and primitive. We need to look at it in a rational way and say, how can we help the body heal itself?
I don't want to say, 'I want to cure cancer.' It's such a grand thing. People have been trying for so long and we're not getting very far. But I do want to try to understand it better, and I want to make some forward movement.