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The Future Of Medicine Case Study

Decent Essays

The information put forth in this TED talk was regarding the manner treatment of disease was approached. But to discuss the future of medicine, he begins with addressing the past. The prior and current model has a downward motion and is “so profoundly simple is can be summarized in 6 words: Have disease -> Take pill -> Kill something” (TED 2015). This method has been dominant since the 1950’s because of the antibiotic revolution stemming from the introduction of antibiotics into the United States which took place over 100 years ago. The mechanism under which antibiotics function is likened to a lock and key and the specificity of the lock and key mechanism was so exquisite that fatal or lethal diseases, such as tuberculosis or pneumonia, …show more content…

He had been an avid runner for most of his life and was unaware that the cartilage in his knee was degenerating until he woke one morning 10 years prior (2005) unable to move because the cartilage had torn completely, and the bones had shattered. Subsequently, he began testing in a laboratory with simple experiments to try and fix the cartilage with injections into the knee spaces of animals which all resulted to naught. Then three years down the line, a research student from Australia named Dan questioned “You know, maybe it isn't a mechanical problem. Maybe it isn't a chemical problem. Maybe it's a stem cell problem?” (TED 2015). That led to the discovery of skeletal stem cells that build up the entire vertebrate skeleton, cartilage, fibrous elements of skeleton, and bone. These cells were able to be grown in a petri dish outside of the body and thus could be inserted back into the patient if need be. This indicates a specific change to the metaphor itself, but maybe a more powerful effect would come from changes to the intangible M’s: mechanisms, models, and metaphors. The presenter was Dr. Siddharth Mukherjee, an oncologist, cancer researcher, and assistant professor of medicine at Columbia University. He is also the author of The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction, and The Laws of Medicine. He is the editor of Best Science Writing 2013. He is a Rhodes scholar, graduated from Stanford

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