My paragraph today comes from ‘3010 Melbourne University Magazine’ Issue 1, 2017. I think I must have picked it up at an Open Day. Some things that are sitting on my TBR pile probably should have been read a while ago…just saying…
The paragraph is in a short article in a series of articles showcasing the University’s many talented people. This same page has a brief paragraph on Vegemite.
Alarmingly, many patients don’t respond to a given therapy, but doctors will soon be able to order drug testing on organoids derived from their patients’ own cancer cells. They will then be able to use drugs on patients they already know will work. This makes personalised cancer therapy a reality today.
On reading this I stopped short. It’s very futuristic and thinking of the number of people I know with cancer I can’t help wishing this technology were already available. One young man went to America for some ground breaking medicine, he’s now making sure that medicine is available in Australia so others can benefit from his experience.
We’ve come an incredibly long way this year. It was only a few short months ago that covid19 left China. Since then our researchers have already managed to clone it and then worked out vaccines for it. This speedy progress would not have been even thought of in 1918 when the Spanish Flu was around, in fact, flu vaccines didn’t appear until the 1940s. The Spanish Flu stopped only when those infected had died or the survivors had developed immunity. It killed between 20 and 50 million people. We have the chance to do better as it seems some vaccines might be available from next year.
The other thing that pops into mind is Star Trek: Voyager. This is the TV show where they are on a deep space mission and have a holographic doctor. If covid19 happened to join Voyager they would have just activated the Doctor and he would have synthesised a cure and vaccine in days. Tell me why I’d prefer to live on Voyager?
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