In fast moving fields like cancer, where doctors tailor treatments based on evidence that's constantly evolving, two years can be an eternity of waiting to learn about important science. For some patients, that interval can be fatal.
Interpretation
In rapidly advancing medical fields like cancer treatment, waiting for research results can have dire consequences for patients.
This quote emphasizes the urgency of advancements in cancer research and treatment, highlighting how the fast-paced evolution of medical knowledge can significantly impact patient outcomes. For individuals battling cancer, delays in receiving new evidence or treatment options within just a two-year span can mean the difference between life and death, reflecting the critical nature of timely medical progress.
In practice
In a conference on cancer research, this quote highlights the urgency of rapid advancements needed in treatment.
Science offers the chance to cure debilitating and once-intractable disorders like hemophilia and sickle cell disease. But we need to make sure the ability to access these therapies, or the risk that someone can be locked out of them, doesn't widen gaps between the rich and poor.
It is true that some off-label drug use is based on very unsettled science and has more risks. But medicine - and not just cancer care - involves lots of hard choices. And the more serious the disorder, often the more likely it is that for every right and wrong treatment choice there are many other practical decisions painted in shades of gray.
We need to make sure that access to a curative drug doesn't become a yardstick by which poverty is eventually measured. Doing so requires a shared commitment between innovators and the insurance plans that are harder pressed to offer these advances to the poor.
In a small lab, if you make a mistake, you can go in the next day and fix it. But here, when you are committed to spending a hundred thousand or a million dollars, you can't fix it later. You need to have a system of checks and balances internally. In particle physics, that's just part of the structure.
I'm aware there are certain products that are being advertised - food products - with 'no chemicals whatsoever.' Well, that would be pretty hard to arrange, since everything around us is made up of atoms and molecules - chemicals - including ourselves.
In fact, nothing in science as a whole has been more firmly established by interwoven factual information, or more illuminating than the universal occurrence of biological evolution. Further, few natural processes have been more convincingly explained than evolution by the theory of natural selection, or as it has been popularly called, Darwinism.
Science and everyday life cannot and should not be separated.
Mathematics, in the development of its ideas, has only to take account of the immanent reality of its concepts and has absolutely no obligation to examine their transient reality.
Thanks to farm subsidies, the fine collaboration between agribusiness and Congress, soy, corn and cattle became king. And chicken soon joined them on the throne. It was during this period that the cycle of dietary and planetary destruction began, the thing we're only realizing just now.
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