Spit for the Cure

Updated 3/2017-- all links (except to my own posts) removed as many no longer active.

The local Susan G Komen Race for the Cure is this Saturday in Little Rock, AR. The University of Arkansas Medical Sciences (UAMS) is using the event to collect saliva samples from thousands of women. The samples will be used to used to create a DNA database for future studies related to breast cancer risk and treatment. Participants in "Spit for the Cure" will be asked to answer a short questionaire. All information is to be kept confidential and the samples are to be labeled by number not name. The leading researchers are Susan Kadlubar, PhD, assistant professor of environmental and occupational health in the UAMS College of Public Health, V. Suzanne Klimberg, M.D., director of the breast cancer program at the UAMS Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute (formerly the Arkansas Cancer Research Center), and Kristy Bondurant, Ph.D., postdoctoral fellow. (photo credit)

“It has become clear that an individual’s inherited profile and environmental exposures will decide, to a large degree, that individual’s risk of developing breast cancer. We are working to obtain DNA samples from a representative group of Arkansas women that will be used to advance breast cancer research in a variety of areas.” Suzanne Klimberg, MD

A rare chance to spit in public and it be sociable acceptable.
Trail Manners by Wendy Bumgardner
Manners and Etiquette in the Antebellum South