Monday, August 24, 2009 6:08 PM CDT
Lacy probes ties between human health, marine life
By BOB FALLSTROM, Staff Writer
DECATUR — Eric Lacy wants to know: “How does the ocean affect man?”
The Mattoon native is the director of the Marine Biomedicine and Environmental Sciences Center of the University of South Carolina in Charleston, S.C.
The mission is to investigate the relationship of organisms and their marine environment with an emphasis on aspects of human health and disease. Lacy is a detective in this manner: “How can we connect seafood and human health?”
Lacy has long studied how stingrays adjust to changing salinity levels. The answers could provide an effective spermicide for humans.
Research is also going on in the areas of drugs from the sea, marine mammal health, coral health and disease and many other marine aspects.
In the Charleston, S.C., area, oysters and shrimp are targets. Lacy has said, “The worldwide shrimping industry is billions of dollars. It cyclically goes through patterns where disease will wipe it out.”
Lacy’s researchers are part of a new breed of soldier — scientists from differing disciplines working together to understand how the well-being of each can be improved.
More than 100 scientists are located in the $40 million Hollings Marine Lab on the edge of Charleston harbor.
It’s a five-agency collaboration — the Medical University of South Carolina, College of Charleston, South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
“The labs are communal, no walls,” Lacy said. “It’s serendipity,” meaning a talent for making fortunate discoveries while searching for other things.
“This is the only medical school in the country with a marine program,” Lacy said. “We’re beginning to move along.”
The son of Dick and Betty Lacy of Decatur, formerly of Mattoon, Lacy, 63, was a tennis player at Mattoon High School while growing up with a fascination for rocks and bugs. “He always had them in his pocket,” Betty Lacy said.
Lacy studied one year at Eastern Illinois University, then transferred to Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, where he graduated. He has a doctorate from the University of New York-Buffalo.
As a “person who always liked science,” he was on the faculty at the Harvard Medical School before moving to South Carolina 24 years ago. He has been the director of the Marine Biomedicine and Environmental Sciences Center for 12 years. In addition, he is a professor of cell biology and anatomy at the Medical University of South Carolina and is director of the oceans and human health initiative graduate training grant.
“My husband and I are average people,” Betty Lacy said. “When a Midwest kid from an average family achieves something like Eric has, it makes us happy.”
Contact Bob Fallstrom at bfallstrom@herald-review.com or 421-7981.
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