Linda in Ireland, at 21
As a college senior she did a "If today is Thursday then we're in Brussels" whirlwind tour of Europe
Long ago I read a science fiction story consisting of a
single “scene”, if you will – the presentation of the Nobel Prize in medicine
to the curer of cancer. Turned out to be
a computer.
Well, now we know that there will never be a single cure for
“cancer”, because each individual tumor is unique, with its own cause and
potential cure. (Well, maybe they’re not all literally unique, but there are a
heck of a lot of variations within the disease we call cancer.) Targeted therapy is becoming the rage; deduce
what’s wrong by sequencing some genes, then design a cure. This requires enormous computing power. And who’s got that? IBM, of course. A news item
describes how IBM is partnering with 14 cancer centers (Yale
and the Mao Clinic were mentioned) to develop analytical techniques that will enable doctors and medical
scientists to build the correct designer drugs.
This sounds like progress to me, but I suspect it will be expensive
progress. I keep worrying that the cost
to society of these new medical miracles will turn out to be more than society
is willing to pay.
But, anyway – maybe a collection of computer algorithms, not
the machine they run on, will get that Nobel.
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