Dr. Elizabeth Comen

My dad is a lawyer.

So I kind of grew up in this very questioning household.

And I wanted to be an authority in something.

And I ended up majoring in the history of science in college.

That makes sense with your book.

Yes.

And so I was really fascinated by not only scientific discovery in the present, but the context within which science and medicine happens.

The history, the culture, the stories that we've been told ourselves, and how that plays into discovery and advances.

because we know it doesn't happen in a vacuum.

Undergrad degree, and then you get right into med school.

Did you take time off?

No, I was always a very type A person.

Now I don't know what type I am, but I'm all over the place.

But I was definitely very focused.

In fact, when I was in college, I had worked with breast cancer patients

at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, helping them with wigs and breast prostheses as part of a look good, feel better program.

The same time my aunt was diagnosed with breast cancer and I started talking to these experts and I ended up working in a lab looking into the estrogen receptor and breast cancer.

And I was so fascinated by the biology, but yet I always wanted to get off on the floor where the patients were.

And I never really wavered in that interest.

Okay.