For the first time, doctors have used gene therapy to stave off a fatal degenerative brain disease, an achievement that some experts had thought impossible. The key to making the therapy work? One of medicine’s greatest villains: HIV. The patients were children who had inherited a mutated gene causing a rare disorder, adrenoleukodystrophy, or ALD. … [Read More]
Archives for January 2018
The Gene Editors Are Only Getting Started
Rewriting the code of life has never been so easy. In 2012 scientists demonstrated a new DNA-editing technique called Crispr. Five years later it is being used to cure mice with HIV and hemophilia. Geneticists are engineering pigs to make them suitable as human organ donors. Bill Gatesis spending $75 million to endow a few … [Read More]
The Smart-Medicine Solution to the Health-Care Crisis
The controversy over Obamacare and now the raucous debate over its possible repeal and replacement have taken center stage recently in American politics. But health insurance isn’t the only health-care problem facing us—and maybe not even the most important one. No matter how the debate in Washington plays out in the weeks ahead, we will … [Read More]
Here’s the real reason why U.S. health care is so expensive
“We should get the outcomes right and pay for the outcomes that we care!! Here’s the real reason why U.S. health care is so expensive – Dr. Clay Johnston, Dean of the Dell Medical School at The University of Texas at Austin, explains why.” https://www.marketwatch.com/video/sectorwatch/here-the-real-reason-why-us-health-care-is-so-expensive/99E1EFB2-1BDE-4166-B373-A851A1CF849A.html
When Clinicians Know They’re Being Watched, Patients Fare Better
In the 1920s, a series of experiments were conducted at Hawthorne Works, a Western Electric telephone factory just outside Chicago, to study the effects of lighting on worker productivity. The researchers found that improved lighting increased manufacturing output – but only until the study ended, when productivity reverted to its previous level, even though the … [Read More]
