天赋异禀：一个秘密的开端
演讲者以一个关于“超能力”的引子拉开了序幕，并揭示了她拥有的并非选择而来、而是与生俱来的“诊断之鼻”。她将听众带回1956年，讲述了年仅六岁的自己向祖母抱怨朋友“太臭”的童年经历。祖母用苏格兰口音告诫她，人们的气味并非她所感受的那样，并透露家中代代相传的敏锐嗅觉，同时严肃地警告她：“你不能告诉任何人！他们不会喜欢你这样。你答应吗？” 尽管她承诺保密，祖母最终还是帮助她理解这份天赋。多年后，她才得知自己患有“遗传性嗅觉过敏”（hereditary hyperosmia），即一种高度发达的嗅觉。然而，“你不能告诉任何人”这句话在她心中埋下了分裂的种子，一边是能够感知一切的鼻子，一边是需要隐藏的自我。尽管如此，祖母并未抛弃她，而是以理解和乐趣的方式引导她，一起探索了各种气味，无论是好是坏，都充满了奇妙的体验。
Original English
I’m going to start out by asking you: which superpower would you like to choose? Would it be flying? Would it be strength? Would it be speed? The national papers and media have ... said I have a superpower. However, I did not choose this superpower. I was born with a nose that can diagnose. I'm going to take you back to 1956. [You can tell nobody!] A long time ago. I was a six-year-old girl standing in front of my grandmother, grumbling. "My friends, they all smell. They really smell." And in her Scottish accent, "Now you can't be saying that." (Laughter) "That's no nice. People don't smell the way we can. My mother had the nose, I have the nose, now you here. But don't you worry. I will help you the way my mother helped me." But she raised her voice and pointed a finger. "You can tell nobody! They won't like it. You promise?" I promised. I nodded my head. She gave me a cuddle and left the room. Many years later, I was to discover that she had just told me I had hereditary hyperosmia, a heightened sense of smell. But the words "you can tell nobody" split me in two. There was the nose, sensing everything around me. And then there was me. But she didn't abandon me. She helped me, she was very understanding, we had great fun. We smelt everything, good and bad. (Laughter) It was just wonderful.气味解析与情感联结：嗅觉的科学与人文
演讲者进一步阐述了她对气味的解析能力，她意识到祖母并非仅仅感知一个整体的气味，而是能将其分解为不同的“挥发物”（volatiles）。她通过日常生活中加油和品酒的例子，说明了人们在不自觉中都会与挥发性气味互动，并以孩童对“臭气”的反应作趣解。随后，她详细描绘了1968年作为一名护士的工作环境：拥挤的病房、金属的医疗用具以及需要处理的各种体液，这些都让她在接触中逐渐认识和积累了对疾病气味的“医学嗅觉库”，她称之为“我的护理气味包”。在这个时期，一位对她至关重要的人物——她未来的丈夫Les——走进了她的生活。两人相识于16岁，Les身上有一种独特的“男性麝香”气味，并且因为体谅她的敏感，从不使用香水或止汗剂。然而，当Les 31岁时，这种气味开始发生变化，并逐渐成为他身上最明显的气味。演讲者提及，当时她并不知道，这种变化的嗅觉实际上已让她无意中诊断出了丈夫的某种疾病，而医学界则花了整整12年才最终确诊。
Original English
But I soon, much to my amazement, when I was older, I realized my grandmother took a smell, she separated it, and there was never one smell. It became volatiles. Now you can all do this. You open your petrol cap, and what do you get? A rather nasty smell. But you take the nozzle, you put it in the hole, you press the lever. And while the smell comes out of you, doesn’t it? It’s gasoline. When you sit down on a Friday evening with a glass in your hand and you think, "Oh, I'll just have a drink." You don't just go. You have a smell, you relax. So you all know about volatiles. But the greatest example is the child with the fart. (Laughter) They all know what that means. (Laughs) However, I was to trouble my grandmother a little. I decided to do nursing. And she realized what the nose would experience. I’m going to draw a picture for you: the NHS in 1968. Long Nightingale wards, 18 patients minimum with five beds down the middle in winter. We had no disposables; metal bedpans, metal urinals, open sputum mugs on the top of the cabinets at the side of the bed. We had to take those receptacles, take them into the sluice, sometimes divide them up and put them into vials to go off to the lab. Or we poured them down the sluice and the hot water would hit them, and the nose began to realize what those volatiles were. The diseases that I was experiencing. I had acquired a medical olfactory library. I called it my nursing bag of smells. But there was somebody at that time who was very important to me, who came into my life. He was my husband-to-be. Les and I met when we were 16 at school. And he had this wonderful male musk smell. He really did. He didn't wear any perfume, he knew I was sensitive, so he didn't wear any perfume or deodorant. However, when he was 31, that smell began to change, and it worried me. By the time he was 33, this smell was his dominant smell. But unknown to us, I had diagnosed him with a disease. My nose had diagnosed him, and it took medicine 12 years later to catch up. He was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.突破性发现：气味成为帕金森氏症的早期生物标记
Les 被诊断出帕金森氏症（Parkinson's disease）后，很快便从麻醉师的职位上退休。在他们决定返回苏格兰并参加第一次帕金森氏症会议时，演讲者在会场中被一股压倒性的、熟悉的“疾病气味”所笼罩，这让她惊慌失措，以至于找借口跑出房间。在洗手间里，她如同当年面对祖母一样，扪心自问“现在该怎么办？”。深呼吸后，她回到会场，让自己的嗅觉去工作。令她惊讶的是，离开会场时，她已经能够区分出哪些人患有帕金森氏症，哪些人没有。回到家，她与Les详谈了这次经历，并再次提起他身上那种31岁时首次出现的、后来发生改变的气味。Les，作为一名医生，逐渐意识到他们可能发现了一个生物标记（biomarker）——一个能够早期指示帕金森氏症的迹象。当她发现自己能够将这种“帕金森氏症的气味”归入她积累的“护理气味包”时，她意识到这个曾让她困扰的嗅觉能力，在此刻变得完整而意义非凡。
Original English
It developed quite quickly, and he retired from being a consultant anesthetist when he was 50. We decided to go back to Scotland, and we were going to go to our first Parkinson's meeting. We entered the room. I spoke to the woman who had Parkinson's, who was selling raffle tickets. [I] turned into the room, and I was hit by this overwhelming, familiar smell. I lied. I made an excuse. I ran out to the toilet, and there, with my head on the wall, I asked my grandmother: "What am I going to do now?" I took a deep breath, went back into the room and let the nose do its work. By the time I had left that room, I could tell I could differentiate between those who had Parkinson's and those who didn't. We left. We went home, and I sat him down at the dining room table. I explained what had happened, and he looked at me, and I reminded him of the smell I had first encountered when he was about 31. And I could see his face change. He had begun to realize, as a doctor, we perhaps had found a biomarker. An early diagnostic indication of Parkinson's disease. When I could not place that smell into my nursing bag, my nursing bag all of a sudden became complete.从学术问答到科学合作：“气味诊断”的诞生
当Les希望将这一发现告诉更多人时，他找到了Parkinson's UK在爱丁堡举办的一次关于干细胞的讲座，主讲人为Tilo Kunath博士。由于Les身体不适，演讲者独自前往。在讲座结束时，她鼓起勇气站起来提问：“我们为什么不利用帕金森氏症的气味来更早地诊断它？”现场一度陷入寂静，随后Tilo Kunath博士邀请她稍后详谈。这次互动虽然短暂，但Tilo后来在一次晚宴上向一位癌症研究员提到了此事，对方鼓励他“去找那位女士”。经过Parkinson's UK的牵线搭桥，演讲者与Tilo Kunath博士进行了交流，并被介绍给了Professor Perdita Barran。后者所在的曼彻斯特生物技术中心位于大学附近。为了科学验证演讲者的能力，研究团队决定采取措施，将她与帕金森氏症患者进行隔离，因为她能直接感知到症状。他们设计了一个实验：让12名参与者（6名对照者，6名患者）穿着t-shirt 24小时，期间不得洗澡、使用香水或止汗剂。这些t-shirt被收集后，剪下了后颈和侧面的布料，共计24份样本被送往Tilo。演讲者最终成功辨别出了所有帕金森氏症患者的气味，并发现气味主要集中在后颈和脸部区域，而非腋下。更令人惊喜的是，她标记的“假阳性”样本，在六个月后该参与者被确诊为帕金森氏症，这证明了她的诊断能力极具预见性，并为“Nose to Diagnose”（用鼻子诊断）项目奠定了基础。
Original English
When he decided he wanted to find someone to tell, he found a Parkinson’s UK lecture in Edinburgh -- a stem cell lecture by Doctor Tilo Kunath. It was sad. Les was not well enough that day to come with me. And I waited for the end of the talk on stem cells, and I stood up, and I said: "Why are we not using the smell of Parkinson's to diagnose it earlier?" Total silence. (Laughter) Tilo said, "Could you repeat that?" So I repeated it again. He looked around the room, everybody turned around, and [he said]: "Perhaps we could talk about this later, could we?" Tilo was busy, and I knew Les was ill. We had a quick hello, and I left. It was to take a while before things were moving, but Tilo went to a dinner, and he said to this cancer researcher what had happened. And the woman said to him, "Go and find that woman." So I got this phone call through Parkinson’s UK, and we had a quick chat about it. And then Tilo introduced me to Professor Perdita Barran, who is here this morning. She is at Manchester Biotechnology Unit, just down the road in the university. And they decided, quite rightly, they had to separate me from anyone that had Parkinson's because I could see the symptoms. So they thought about it, and they thought: t-shirts. So there were 12 people. There were six who were controls, people without Parkinson's, six with Parkinson's. They wore t-shirts for 24 hours. They weren't allowed to bathe or have any perfume on or any deodorant. They took them off after the 24 hours, bagged them, and sent them back to Tilo. Tilo and I had had a discussion that the main smell was round the back of the neck and the face. So they took the t-shirts, as you can see, cut the back of the neck out, and even to make it more awkward for me, cut them in half. So I was presented with 24 bags. The results were surprising. There were three important things. I could diagnose all the people with Parkinson's disease. The smell indeed was not in the armpits but at the mid-back. I had one false positive. "Oh no," said I. That person came back six months later and said, "I have Parkinson's." So I had actually pre-diagnosed somebody in the proof of concept, which made a huge difference. And this launched Nose to Diagnose.“鼻子诊断”项目：研究进展与未来展望
“Nose to Diagnose”项目的启动，标志着演讲者的个人天赋正式进入了科学研究的轨道。她介绍了自己与GCMS（Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry）机器并肩工作的场景，机器能够通过分析样本中的挥发物来得出结果，而这与她通过嗅觉感知类似。该项目迄今已分析了超过2000份参与者的样本，其中200多份样本用于探索帕金森氏症的具体气味特征，600多份用于理解帕金森氏症如何改变人体皮脂。更重要的是，研究已推动开发出一种快速、无创的五分钟诊断测试，只需用拭子或Q-tip擦拭面部或后颈即可。他们还进行了超过700项的探索性研究，以期将此测试推广到全球的医院。虽然技术最终将取代她的人工嗅觉，但这并未阻止她继续参与帕金森氏症的全球研究和倡导工作。
Original English
And here I am on the dual port with the GCMS machine. I’m smelling the volatiles that were familiar whereas the machine is smelling -- well, it isn't smelling, it's working out the volatiles from the swab. And we get a result at the end, which has never failed to amaze me. We have done over 2,000 ... total participants’ samples. Over 200 of those were discovering what smells in Parkinson's. Over 600 of those are understanding why Parkinson's changes the sebum in the body. Over 400 [are] developing a fast five-minute diagnostic test, and over 700 are exploratory studies to translate the test. They've designed a very simple test, non-invasive, swab or Q-Tip round the face or the back of the neck. It is then bagged, but there is a simple, two pieces of paper description how to do it efficiently. And we want to put it in every hospital in the world. And they don't need me to smell it anymore. But that doesn't stop me. (Laughter)全球倡导与生命承诺：传递希望与爱的力量
演讲者积极投身于帕金森氏症的全球倡导和患者支持工作，她参与世界帕金森联盟（World Parkinson's Coalition）、担任世界帕金森大会（World Parkinson's Congress）的倡导者，并是“女性帕金森未满足需求”（Unmet Needs for Women in Parkinson's）的创始成员，同时也是YOPD（Young Onset Parkinson's Disease）委员会的一员。在Cure Parkinson's Trust的Helen Matthews的支持下，她还积极参与到面向全球的演讲中，并为照护者们提供帮助，协助制作了面向医疗专业人士的课程，以提高他们对照护者所面临的困境和焦虑的认识。Les不幸在她丈夫去世前不久，在首轮测试后不久去世。在他临终前，他请求她继续这项研究，而她也承诺并已履行了对他的诺言。
Original English
I contribute to Parkinson's all over the world. I am part of the World Parkinson's Coalition. I'm also an advocate for the World Parkinson's Congress, which will be in July this year in Barcelona. I am a founding member of the Unmet Needs for Women in Parkinson's, which is fairly new. And also, I'm on the YOPD Council. The Women's Council is run by Helen Matthews from the Cure Parkinson's Trust, and they facilitate it. I also do other talks, of course, from my home to various people in the world. And also, I am doing extra in the research field for carers. I have actually helped to produce a course for healthcare professionals, as I was a carer for such a long time, to make carers aware of the problems and the anxiety of being a carer. Les, unfortunately, died just after the first set of testing. On his deathbed, he made me promise. He made me promise that I would continue this research. And I now realize I have fulfilled my promise to him.超越帕金森：嗅觉在其他领域的潜力与祖母的嘱托
演讲者的嗅觉天赋并未止步于帕金森氏症的研究。她提到了与Dr. Drupad Trivedi一起前往坦桑尼亚，与APOPO组织的非洲巨鼠（Kennedy，great African pouched rat）合作的经历。这些经过训练的巨鼠能够探测地雷或肺结核（TB），但它们的回应是二元的“是”或“否”，无法量化感染程度。研究团队希望利用尿液、蛋白质组学、皮脂和痰液等样本，探索气味检测在其他疾病诊断上的潜力。演讲者深情回顾了她和Les当初坚持这项研究的初衷：帕金森氏症在诊断时，通常已造成50%的不可逆神经损伤。她设想，如果Les在33岁时就被诊断出来，他们或许能提供更好的帮助。她还憧憬，患有帕金森氏症的女性、年轻发病者（YOPD）能通过简单测试被早期诊断，从而避免不必要的痛苦和手术。最后，她想象如果祖母还在世，她会告诉她：“去吧，我的好女儿，告诉全世界！”这一转变，象征着从“严守秘密”到“普惠大众”的价值升华。