Marie
Lin, 73, director and professor at the Transfusion Medicine Laboratory of
Mackay Memorial Hospital in Taipei, is arguably better qualified than most
people to tackle the thorny issues of genetic lineage and ethnical identity
from a historical perspective, because, among other things, Lin is the product
of a cross-cultural marriage.
And some of her other discoveries about blood
groups, especially the peculiarities of blood groups commonly found in Taiwan
and East Asia, can be attributed to her compassion for her less-fortunate
compatriots as both a Christian and a well-trained pathologist who has seen,
and experienced, her fair share of human suffering.
Lin's mother, a Japanese woman, was the
daughter of a Japanese bushi (samurai) of the Kuroda clan native to a place
north of today's Nagasaki, in Kyushu, in southeastern Japan.
After a cursory look at her life story, one
cannot help but wonder whether it was the samurai or the Christian in her that
held her steady and gave her the resilience she needed as she looked eye to eye
at the cancer cells, which were her own, through a microscope.
Human History is a Melting Pot: Marie Lin
"Who and what am I?" is a question
that never ceases to perplex people curious about their ethnic provenance,
especially in Taiwan, where such a question is often considered politically
charged.
An answer to this question may continue to
elude the country's 23-million-strong population for a long time on social,
political and cultural levels, but a genetic answer, it seems, has been found
by Lin, who has delineated the ethnic lineages of the people of Taiwan by
deciphering their mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA).
Mitochondrial DNA can be regarded as the
smallest chromosome, and was the first significant part of the human genome to
be sequenced. In most species, including humans, mtDNA is inherited solely from
the mother, according to researchers.
The sequence of mtDNA has been derived from a
large number of organisms and individuals (including some organisms that are
extinct), and the comparison of those DNA sequences represents a mainstay of
phylogenetics, in that it allows biologists to elucidate the evolutionary
relationships among species.
It also permits an examination of the
relatedness of populations, and so has become important in anthropology and
field biology.
Having spent six years taking blood samples
from tribe after tribe of Aborigines throughout the island, Lin has been able
to establish through mitochondrial decoding that Taiwan aborigines of the Ami,
Atayal, and Tsou tribes are genetically related to the Aborigines of New
Guinea, Polynesians and the Maori of New Zealand, thus confirming the earlier
findings of anthropologists and historical linguists based on linguistic and
other evidence.
In its July 9, 2005, issue, the Economist
magazine flatly stated in an article titled "Taiwan, twinned with
Haiwaii" that "Polynesians are Taiwanese in disguise,"citing the
findings of Marie Lin and French-born scholar Jean Trejaut.
Her findings at the dawn of the 21st Century
have stoked the curiosity of the Taos, the Orchid Island Aborigines.
So three years ago, at the request of Tao
elders, Lin went to the Batanes Islands, a Philippine island group comprised of
ten islets located in the Luzon Strait between the islands of Luzon and Taiwan,
to find out whether the people there are the cousins of the Taos.
Blood sampling and subsequent mitochondrial
decoding eventually yielded genetic evidence to confirm the long-held belief
that the people of Batanes, called Ivatan, share cultural and linguistic
affinity with the Tao people of Taiwan and that these people trace their roots
to prehistoric Formosan immigrants and latter-day Spanish conquistadors.
A more controversial, but no less significant,
discovery of hers is that the Southern Fukinese-speaking Taiwanese and the
Hakkas are genetically more closely related to the people known as the Bai Yue
people, but less closely related to the northern Han Chinese found north of the
Yantze River (Changjiang).
Affectionately referred to as Taiwan's
"mother of safe blood transfusion," Lin was the first Taiwanese woman
scientist short-listed for the L'Oreal-UNESCO Awards for Women in Science (aka
the Helena Rubinstein Women in Science Awards) for making blood transfusion
safe in the country.
??Early in her career, she was dismayed by the
large number of blood cows, people who sell their blood for a living, lurking
outside hospitals and even blood donation centers.
She knew perfectly well transfusions from
these people could make the patients suffer more - most notably B-type
hepatitis - than those they were dealing with medical issues in the first
place.
Back in the country after wrapping up her
blood transfusion studies at the University of Texas Medical Branch in
Galveston, Texas, in 1981, Lin set out to reform the blood donation and storage
systems systematically.
After spending an entire year working as a
volunteer at a blood donation center, where she coached medical personnel on
the proper ways to run donation and transfusion operations and blood tests and
organized study groups, she started her personal education campaign for blood
donation, telling people, on television or in public speeches, to try and save
lives by overcoming their ingrained aversion to giving blood.
"And I did that by overcoming my
ingrained aversion to television appearances," Lin told The China Post on
Monday, Nov. 28.
After a survey trip to Europe and
consultations with the world's top experts in the field, she lobbied for the
subordination of the country's blood donation centers under the Cabinet-level
Department of Health after their spin-off from the Ministry of the Interior,
which did not have the expertise to test the blood for viral contamination, and
she was able, after working hard for eight long years, to shut down the
"blood cow-infested" donation centers, where she was jeered by some
of the professional blood cows, and secured enough blood supply for the
country's hospitals.
"In 1992, Taiwan became self-sufficient
in blood products, and no more blood was bought and sold," said Lin, who
also suggested blood cows might be to blame for the alleged existence of more
than 10 million HIV carriers in mainland China.
Conquering
Hurdle after Hurdle
Life, however, has not been a cakewalk for
Lin, and she was no stranger to blood-related diseases as a patient herself.
While still a college student, Lin needed
frequent blood transfusions as a victim of aplastic anemia and it was her
father, also a physician, who saved her life by treating her personally in
home.
A hard working person, she came down with
tuberculosis when she was 31.
But the most life-threatening challenge almost
claimed her life 13 years later, when she was 44.
Conducting her own biopsy after doing the same
for so many others, she saw, through a microscope with her own eyes and in
utter disbelief, the cancel cells dug out from her mammalian glands.
She prevailed in the end, after a 16-year
battle against carcinogens.
Most people would be happy making a single
important discovery in their lives, but Lin has achieved far more than that
aside from publishing more than 160 articles in journals, surviving a divorce,
and raising a family of four while studying hard in the United States
But enough is enough, the mother f two and
grandmother of six said she would prefer to spend her retirement capturing the
beauty of Tamshui in her own paintings and going on the lecturing circuit.
Her sons, one of whom is a Christian minister,
will have to raise their own children and let their mother get some
well-deserved rest.
T.M. Fok
The China Post/Asia News Network
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