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.
Interpretation
Scientific advancements bring hope for curing diseases, but access must be equitable to avoid increasing inequality.
This quote emphasizes the potential of science to develop treatments for serious health conditions like hemophilia and sickle cell disease. However, it warns that without careful consideration and equitable access to these medical breakthroughs, disparities between different socioeconomic groups may grow, leading to increased inequality in health and wellbeing.
In practice
In a public health seminar discussing equitable access to healthcare advancements.
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.
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.
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.
The art of doing mathematics consists in finding that special case which contains all the germs of generality.
Our senses enable us to perceive only a minute portion of the outside world.
The art of doing science is doing the important things first.
We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.
The stars are laboratories in which the evolution of matter proceeds in the direction of large molecules.
If you want to find out anything from the theoretical physicists about the methods they use, I advise you to stick closely to one principle: don't listen to their words, fix your attention on their deeds. To him who is a discoverer in this field the products of his imagination appear so necessary and natural that he regards them, and would like to have them regarded by others, not as creations of thought but as given realities.
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