Word: sisterly
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Even as she sped past her 100th year, Sister Mary projected the energy and enthusiasm of a much younger woman. With the aid of a magnifying glass, she kept abreast of national affairs by reading newspapers and magazines. With the aid of a globe, she prayed for the women and children of the world, one continent at a time. In fact, so savvy did Sister Mary seem, so tuned in to her surroundings, that University of Kentucky epidemiologist David Snowdon began to think of her as a kind of gold standard for successful aging...
...when Sister Mary died--in 1995, three months short of her 102nd birthday--an autopsy of her brain revealed a startling secret. Everywhere Snowdon and his colleagues looked, they saw signs of devastation, from microscopic plaques and tangles to gaping holes where millions of brain cells had died. Sister Mary, they realized, had been living with an advanced case of Alzheimer's disease--so advanced, says Snowdon, that it was hard to understand how she could have conducted herself with such clarity and coherence...
...them an exact copy of their six-year-old daughter, recently found to be suffering from leukemia so aggressive that only a bone-marrow transplant can save her. The problem is finding a compatible donor. If, by reproductive happenstance, the girl had been born an identical twin, her matching sister could have produced all the marrow she needed. But nature didn't provide her with a twin, and now the cloning lab will try. In nine months, the parents, who face the very likely prospect of losing the one daughter they have, could find themselves raising...
...giving an ethical O.K. to one hypothetical and a thumbs-down to another--you begin making the sort of ad hoc hash of things the Supreme Court does when it tries to define pornography. Suppose you could show that the baby who was created to provide marrow for her sister would forever be treated like a second-class sibling--well cared for, perhaps, but not well loved. Do you prohibit the family from cloning the first daughter, accepting the fact that you may be condemning her to die? Richard McCormick, a Jesuit priest and professor of Christian ethics...
...sister, Liz Downing, who graduated from Maryland last June and won two straight NCAA titles, is also a team finalist...