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.
It takes sixty-five thousand errors before you are qualified to make a rocket.
If we didn't need eight hours of sleep and could survive on six, Mother Nature would have done away with 25 percent of our sleep time millions of years ago. Because when you think about it, sleep is an idiotic thing to do.
See first, think later, then test. But always see first. Otherwise you will only see what you were expecting. Most scientists forget that.
Many people have the impression that there is significant scientific disagreement about global climate change. It's time to lay that misapprehension to rest. There is a scientific consensus on the fact that Earth's climate is heating up and human activities are part of the reason. We need to stop repeating nonsense about the uncertainty of global warming and start talking seriously about the right approach to address it.
If you go down through the horizon of a black hole, at the center you don't find a tunnel that leads you to some other place in the universe.
The distribution of species on islands and continents throughout the world is exactly what you'd expect if evolution was a fact. The distribution of fossils in space and in time are exactly what you would expect if evolution were a fact. There are millions of facts all pointing in the same direction and no facts pointing in the wrong direction.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.