ON THE COVER
Music & Medicine
The artistry (and science) of Debra Harder, MD, PhD
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by Ronald B. Anderson, MD
hen one attends a classical music concert, part of the typical routine is to pick up a program as you hand in your ticket. The program will list the names of the works you will be hearing, details as to the various movements of which the work is comprised, and often includes supplemental information giving the listener further background such as the date of composition, historical context, biographical information about the composer, and sometimes more details about the structure of the work and what to listen for. This past winter I attended a piano concert given by Debra Harder at Haverford College. Rather unexpectedly, in addition to the usual program of the works to be performed, the concertgoers were given a handout at the door with diagrams of chromosomes, genes, and histones, along with a detailed family tree of the Bach family spanning the 17th and 18th centuries. She played works by members of the Bach family as well as compositions by Beethoven and Chopin; her performance was musically superb and of the highest professional caliber. But between works, she would pause to explain the basic science of genetics, and reflect on the fact that 5 generations of the Bach family produced a large number of highly talented and renowned musicians, culminating in J.S. Bach (1685-1750) and his sons. Surely there was inherited musical talent in this family. Debra noted that after Bach’s sons, however, this superlative musicality seemed to dissipate in the family’s further progeny. She posed the questions: “What happened? Why did the genetic code that found such marvelous expression for so many generations suddenly go dormant?” This led her to discuss epigenetics, the field of genetic science that studies how gene expression can be switched off and on through the influence of environmental factors
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DELAWARE COUNTY MEDICINE & HEALTH
summer 2016