M I S S I O N A R Y

Photocopied with permission of the Covenant Companion - Copyright © 2002

When they were growing up, sisters Alynne MacLean and Christine MacTayler knew exactly what they wanted to do with their lives.  Christine was going to be a missionary doctor, Alynne had a slightly different plan.

            “She was going to be a mad scientist,” says Christine.

            These days, Christine teaches chemistry at Salem State University in Salem, Massachusetts.  And Alynne, who worked for six years in the biotechnology industry after earning her Ph.D, has become a combination missionary and mad scientist.

            In December 2000, Alynne quit her research job at Biogen, Inc. to start Science with a Mission, a non-profit organization that she hopes will create low-cost diagnostic tests for use in the developing world.  The idea, says Alynne, is to develop tests for kidney disease and other ailments that are as simple to use as home pregnancy tests.  Because of donations from U.S. pharmaceutical companies and initiatives by the World Health Organization, doctors in countries like the Dominican Republic have access to the drugs they need to treat many diseases.  But they don’t have the tools they need to diagnose those diseases.

            “A number of years ago,” Alynne says, “being able to diagnose diseases in the developing world was not an issue—there were not medicines to treat those diseases.  Why worry about diagnosing if you don’t have the medicine to treat people?”  Now, she says, “there are doctors who have medicines but do not know who needs them.”           

    Alynne, a member of Community Covenant Church in North Easton, Massachusetts, first had the idea of starting Science with a Mission (SMI) after going on a mission trip to Costa Rica as a college student.  She came back home with the desire to help people she met there.

     After finishing her degree at Gordon College, Alynne knew she wanted to go on and get her doctorate in chemistry.  First, she worked for two years and stayed home to help her mother after her dad died during her senior year of college.   While looking at graduate schools, Alynne wanted to find a program that would allow her to help people as well.  “In the background was always this concern, “she says.  “I even prayed and asked if I was supposed to be a missionary.  I told God, ‘O.K., you gave me this passion for chemistry and this desire to help people in the developing world.  Tell me what I am supposed to do.’”

             During her search, she got some background materials from the University of Kentucky about their chemistry program.  In the materials were articles on a testing technique called “enzyme immunoassays.”

            “Just reading the articles they sent, I could see how this could be used in the developing world,” Alynne says.  “Immunoassays require no electricity, they give immediate results, and can be used in mass screenings.  It’s what they use in the Olympics to test athletes for using steroids or performance-enhancing drugs.”

            Christine says her sister’s idea of using immunoassays is simple but very effective.  “With the test,” she says, “you take the antibodies and stick them on a piece of paper.  Then you put somebody’s blood or urine on it—if they have the antibodies, it will react, just like a home pregnancy test.”

            Alynne figured she would finish her doctorate and then work for an organization that was using immunoassays in the developing world.  What she found after graduation was there was no organization doing that kind of work.  She took a job at a pharmaceutical company for two years, and then worked for six years at Biogen.  She also worked on her own ideas at home, but she didn’t get very far.  There never seemed to be enough time.

            “I really felt that there was a reason I had this passion for chemistry and desire to work in this technology,” she says, “and I didn’t think it was to make the shareholders of a biotechnology company richer.  If there wasn’t an organization that did this, I decided that I would start one.”

            Christine, who serves on the SMI board of directors, says she was not surprised when her sister quit her job to start SMI.  Neither were many of Alynne’s friends.  They knew that Alynne spent most of her vacations on mission trips to Habitat for Humanity work camps.  (She also found time to go skydiving, whitewater rafting, and on a safari to Tanzania.)

              And not having any salary coming in wasn’t a worry.  Alynne, who says she’s very frugal, had enough saved up to keep her going for a year or two.  She turned down the thermostat at home, ate bag lunches, and spent very little on herself.

“Even when I am working in the lab I will take a bag lunch” Alynne says.  “People say that it only saves a little bit of money—but it adds up if you do it year after year.”

            When she started SMI Alynne says she had to unlearn many of the lessons she had learned working in the biotech field.  She had six years of experience working with immunoassays, but also had access to all the latest technology.  Now she had to find ways to make her test work with no electricity and in very primitive conditions.  She started out working with human serum albumin (HSA) because it was inexpensive and easy to use, but it had no practical application.

            Then during a trip to the Dominican Republic, Alynne talked with a doctor who works with a mobile medical clinic.  “He sees 200 people a day,” she says, “and if he brings a colleague, they will see 600 people a day.  He started telling me he was seeing lots of cases of kidney disease.”   One symptom of kidney disease is an increase in the amount to HSA that is excreted.

            “I asked him if an immunoassay for HSA would be helpful,” Alynne says. “What started out as something for me to play around with to understand the technology will be our first immunoassay.”

            The first field tests of the SMI immunoassay for kidney disease are about two years away.  First, Alynne says, she has to make sure she has the best possible test.  Then she has to see if it will work under extreme conditions of temperature and humidity.  “I want to be sure it will take a good beating and still work.”

            Part of the reason for the somewhat slow pace of development is funding for SMI.  Alynne spends two days a week in the lab at Salem State, where she is a scholar-in-residence.  The rest of the time is spent raising money by writing grants and speaking at churches and other groups.  It is slow going but Alynne says she is encouraged by people who have been sending support.

            “People say that they don’t have $1,000 to give,” she says.  “I tell them to support me in any way they can.  It’s better to get $10 from twenty people than $200 from one person.  Foundations want to see that other people believe in this—they want to be part of something that people believe in and want to support.”

            When she is not working on SMI, Alynne tutors four young Sudanese men in East Bridgewater, Massachusetts, where she serves on the mission committee of the Covenant church.  She is also an unofficial foster mom to Mary, a young woman from the Sudan.  “I can’t be a foster parent because I don’t have a salary,” Alynne says.  “But Lutheran Social Services asked if I could act as one for Mary, who is nineteen.”

            While she has concerns about how long she can keep SMI going, Alynne says she is not worried about the future.  “I have known for six years that I wanted to do this,” she says.  “I am incredibly grateful that I had the chance to make it a reality.

            “I am not suffering for the Lord—I am doing something I love.  I love being in the lab and seeing it all come together.”

            Christine says her sister has always had a clear sense of where her life is going.  Even in high school, her friends would say that Alynne was the “wisest person they knew.”

            “When you have to write an essay in school about someone you admire, some people write about Abraham Lincoln,” Christine says.  “I would write about my sister.”

MAKING A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE

Jim Gustafson, executive minister of Covenant World Mission, says that the work of Science with a Mission could be of great benefit in many places where the Covenant is working, like Congo, Sudan, Kenya, and Laos.  The ability to have quick, inexpensive, and effective diagnosis could make a world of difference, Gustafson says.

            “In a lot of countries there is already treatment available,” the diagnosis is slow, long, and you have got to pay for it—if you can’t pay for it you don’t get it.  Normally people, especially poor people, would go to the hospital, couldn’t afford the diagnosis, and would be treated in a manner that wouldn’t be effective in terms of their disease, and they would end up dying.”

            Gustafson first got to know Alynne MacLean from her work on the Covenant Executive Board, where she serves on the World Mission Committee.  He hopes there are ways for SMI and Covenant World Relief to work together.

Jim Gustafson