The Myth of Normal 53

Chapter 4 Everything I’m Surrounded By: Dispatches from the New Science So much of what makes people either well or not is not coming from within themselves, it’s coming from their circumstances. It makes me think much more about social justice and the bigger issues that go beyond individuals. —Elizabeth Blackburn, Ph.D.[*] In 2009 Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for her work on telomeres—minuscule DNA structures at the end of chromosomes. Not unlike the plastic aglets placed at the end of shoelaces to keep them from fraying, these tiny sheaths help protect chromosomal integrity. Good thing, too, since as chromosomes unravel, so do we. Tracking the length and stability of telomeres throughout the lifespan, it turns out, can tell us a great deal about health and longevity. You wouldn’t think it to look at them, but what has been discovered about these tiny biological structures also has huge social implications. One of Dr. Blackburn’s discoveries was that telomeres bear the actual marks—or rather, the markers—of the circumstances in which we live our lives. Amazingly, she found that factors such as poverty, racism, and urban blight can directly impact our genetic and molecular functioning. As the psychologist Elissa Epel, who is Dr. Blackburn’s research collaborator and co-author of the bestselling volume The Telomere Effect: A Revolutionary Approach to Living Younger, Healthier, Longer, told me in an interview, “These effects are not small.”