Mark Basik
Mark Basik is a surgeon specializing in breast cancer at the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal. Motivated by a passion to better treat breast cancer, he also leads a laboratory at the Lady Davis Institute studying the molecular changes in breast cancer, seeking to understand why breast cancer becomes resistant to therapy. His meeting with Prof Lejeune has inspired him to pursue his research with greater urgency, and with a greater openness to explore new avenues of research so characteristic of Lejeune.
Bio last updated April 30th, 2018.
Articles by Mark Basik
Science & Sainthood
By Mark Basik
December 1, 2013
Dr. Mark Basik, a Montreal-based cancer researcher, examines the remarkable scientific career and powerful faith of famed geneticist Dr. Jerome Lejeune
The first and most obvious one was why is it that one extra, and not one missing, chromosome leads to Down's syndrome? Lejeune expected to find missing genetic material, not excess In later interventions, including at a trial challenging the legality of abortion in Saskatchewan in 1984, Lejeune would state that he could not understand how a geneticist could not affirm that a human life was present at the time of the creation of the genetic information specific to that human being But, as Lejeune put it, "the machine will never be able to give the price of human life Lejeune learned how to use this technique and immediately counted the chromosomes from the cells of a patient with Down's, expecting to find a missing chromosome or two Since these patterns appear early on in the womb during embryonic development, and since twins are formed at the earliest moments after conception, Lejeune and his mentor, Turpin, thought that there could be a genetic basis for Down's While Lejeune was a geneticist who discovered trisomy 21 as the cause of Down's syndrome, I lead a research laboratory studying the molecular changes in breast tumours As Lejeune wrote, "The whole difficulty in the research is to discover the discordant musician, because the orchestra of life has about 50,000 musicians