Editorial
In a nation whose adulation of sporting success knows no limit, it is important to recognise extraordinary achievement in other fields — none is more important than medical science.
Today we tell of a Māori family's remarkable contribution to the discovery of a gene transmitting stomach cancer.
Gastric cancer was
long known to run in families but it was not until the 1990s that advances in genetic technology made it possible to identify mutations associated with disease.
Until then, the McLeod family, whose best-known member today is pop star Stan Walker, had attributed the high toll stomach cancer was taking on them to a maketu (curse) they believed had been placed on the whanau.
But in 1994, afflicted members of the family met at their marae near Tauranga to discuss what could be done. One, Maybelle McLeod, applied for funding from the Health Research Council and started working with Otago University's Professor Parry Guilford.
