That is a true story.

It is also a more respectful story — one that honors both the science and the people whose history the science is illuminating.

The Infant As Data Point And As Person

The scientific literature on USR1 refers to her as a genome, a specimen, an ancient individual.

These are the appropriate terms for scientific discussion, and they reflect the legitimate needs of science to abstract from the specific to the general, to treat individuals as data points in the larger patterns that science is trying to identify.

But USR1 was also a person.