Laila Rhee Morris is a genetic counselor in California. She graduated from the Sarah Lawrence College training program in 1992. She loves children, animals, trivia and recycling. Her interests include movies, TV and books that feature genetics.
You could say that I became interested in genetics, healthcare, and soap operas simultaneously. When I was in the 7th grade, I contracted mononucleosis, “the kissing disease,” although, at that point, I was not kissing anyone except the family pets. The fact that a virus was making my white blood cells multiply wildly seems to have sparked my first curiosity about genetics. Mononucleosis completely exhausted me, and my mother mercifully relaxed her 10 hours per week TV rule, which is how I became addicted to soap operas.
After 22 years I find that my genetic counseling sessions can resemble a soap opera. The messy human drama – and sometimes comedy) – plays out in the sessions, hospital rooms, and can even spill over into waiting rooms. But all this is not for my amusement; my job is to help people pick up the pieces of their lives.
I love to tell people that I once wrote a genetic counseling story-line for a soap opera. About 20 years ago, the producers of the soap opera Loving (ABC TV: 1983-1995) called the clinic in New York where I was working to request the help of a genetic counselor to devise a plot-line whereby their star actress, Susan Keith, could have a pregnancy with an unclear ultrasound finding. I excitedly volunteered right away, correctly guessing that my supervisor, Nancy Zellers, would be too busy to take on this task.
I felt vindicated that all those hours that I spent watching were not a waste and I felt as if, finally, these TV people had come to me to develop a decent dramatic story with a foothold in the real world of genetics. The guidelines were that the character had to have prenatal ultrasound finding where the baby could be normal or could have problems after birth. Susan Keith* played Shana Sloane Vocheck Burnell; she was a pretty actress with mountains of red hair. Somewhere in my devious mind or maybe from an actual case, I decided that Shana should have a prenatal ultrasound that detected agenesis of the corpus callosum (ACC) in the fetus.
Shana went for her ultrasound probably expecting everything to be normal, as most real patients do, and thinking that the only point to this ultrasound exam would be to determine whether she was having a girl or a boy. After the ACC diagnosis, the writers had Shana meet with a genetic counselor. Gasp. Can you think of a single TV show or movie where there has been a genetic counselor character?
The genetic counselor character was featured for one day. The producers made it a point to tell me that they even went to the expense to fly out a veteran (show business speak for “older”) actress from Los Angeles to play the role of the genetic counselor (GC). Oh my, the scene with the genetic counselor was just awful. I did not think to record it and thus nothing is left of my masterpiece.
On the positive side, the actress did look like a GC or at least those that I had encountered up to that point during my training. She was an older, kindly appearing Caucasian woman. My cringe worthy moments started the minute that she opened her mouth and introduced herself as “a genetics counselor,” with the “S.”** Then, she ushered Shana and her partner to her office and sat behind a mahogany desk to deliver the bad news. As Shana sobbed and dropped the entire contents of her purse on the ground, the GC excused herself to go take care of something more important in another room. The GC didn’t even offer poor Shana a tissue as Shana was crouching on the carpet in a puddle of tears. On Loving, Shana’s ACC story line went on and on, drawn out for more weeks than a real pregnancy lasts, until Shana eventually delivered an apparently healthy baby girl.
I also want to point out that the soap operas can be educational. They were some great genetic storylines. The 1980 General Hospital paternity storyline involving the Bombay blood phenotype is featured on an NIH website and on YouTube.
After moving away from New York city 20 years ago, I have no time to watch TV and most of the soap operas have been cancelled. Sadly, my soap opera days seem to be behind me but isn’t being let into our patients’ complicated lives (and helping them) the ultimate human drama?
*A different Loving clip featuring Susan Keith can be found on youtube.com at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Iy45gvOXlY Interestingly, this clip features Susan Keith smooching with her real life husband, James Kiberd
** There are some people (Bob Resta is one) who like the “S” in genetics counselor because it sounds as if we are counseling about the field of genetics. I know that it is not an apostrophe “S” but my opinion is that genetics with the S is a tongue twister and makes me sound like a Castilian Spanish aristocrat. I am certain that the original Loving script reflected my preference: the without the “S” variation.
The DNA Exchange 