Medical Advances 52 NorthSoundLife.com
From 3-D printers to gene therapies, medicine is changing like never before
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wo years ago this month, in a sweeping farewell State of the Union address, President Obama made the startling announcement that the U.S. would drastically ramp up efforts to cure cancer. He compared it to John F. Kennedy’s 1962 “moonshot” challenge — the audacious pledge, spurred by the space race with the Soviet Union, to put a man on the moon before the end of the decade. Kennedy didn’t live to see it, but Neil Armstrong, indeed, stepped on the moon in 1969. Obama put Vice President Joe Biden, who lost his son to brain cancer in 2015, in charge of the “Cancer Moonshot” — the mission to make a decade of progress in cancer research in half the time — five years. That effort is continuing, despite the Trump administration’s specter of slashed funding for the National Institutes of Health and other research institutions. But while bold, Obama’s challenge isn’t as pie-in-the-sky as it would’ve been 20 or even 10 years ago. It comes at a time when medical advancements and discoveries are happening at a dizzying pace — faster than most of us
by Meri-Jo Borzilleri
can keep up with or even understand. Science and technology are combining to accelerate changes in the medical field — from creating body-part replacements to gene therapy — like never before. It’s no longer theoretical. The future has arrived. Progress is only going to get faster. One scientist likened today’s gene therapy developments to clunky, firstgeneration personal computers. We’re only at the cusp of where we can go. Eradicating diseases like cancer and multiple sclerosis, and reversing lifealtering conditions like blindness and paralysis seem almost inevitable — our destiny as an evolving civilization. (Reality check: We’ve all seen the futuristic movies where advancements go haywire and prompt the question: Ultimately, will science serve humankind, or the other way around?) For now, we may be entering a golden age of medical achievement. In the following pages, you’ll read about promising — breathtaking, even — medical advances that are happening, some affecting the lives of people here in the North Sound. As for Biden’s Cancer Moonshot, I wouldn’t bet against it.