In the pages of a medical journal, Melanie Joy McDaniel is a study subject, listed by her patient number and tumor type. In real life she’s a little girl whose story is a reminder that medical research can change lives and that the pioneers include patients, some of whom are babies.

Melanie was 9 months old when her parents faced an agonizing decision. She had already had two operations for a malignant brain tumor, and doctors could not be sure they had removed all the cancer. She needed more treatment, but standard chemotherapy offered little hope in exchange for its harsh side effects. And yet the McDaniels knew that if they did nothing, the odds were high that the tumor would come back.

Doctors at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston offered another option, an experimental treatment. To qualify, a child had to have a progressive cancer, and it had to be terminal. The McDaniels took a gamble and a leap of faith, and signed Melanie up.

“It won’t save her, but it may help other people,” her father, Paul McDaniel, told me in an interview for a Science Times article published in April 2002. Then he paused and added, “Maybe it will save her.”