Today is the 8th anniversary of my cancer diagnosis. And I'm still alive! Hooray for modern medicine!
Seriously. My doctors have all been fine and I appreciate everything they do. But I'm alive because medical research has produced a sea change in treatments for multiple myeloma over the past decade, and if I'm lucky I'll soon undergo a treatment that might even put this once incurable disease into remission.
So thanks, researchers! Come on by if you're ever in town and I'll buy you a donut.
congratulation and good luck. i think the ongoing revolution in medical science is generally underappreciated. i expect in 30-40 years the state of medical science and treaments available (for those with the money at least) will be well nigh miraculous by today's standards.
Your readers too are very happy that you are here and doing well (and hopefully doing even better soon) and calling it like it is!
March of Dimes, Easter Seals, etc. did a lot to help get biomedical research started in this country.
The military funded a lot too.
Howard Hughes looking for a tax dodge boosted basic research.
The initial War on Cancer built out the modern biomedical research complex.
The fight against AIDS, once the government got fully involved, built upon the cancer research and helped us understand our immune system.
That understanding of the immune system helped develop immunotherapies.
The fight against AIDS and Ebola pushed vaccine research--though funding a fraction of treatment research.
Along the way, a stoner playing with extremophiles gave us PCR. A woman studying microbes gave us CrispR. The Human Genome Project pushed sequencing techniques. Another women didn't get tenure looking at mRNA kept at it to give us a new class of vaccines.
(Yes, there were collaborators and others were involved too)
So many better things for billionaires to be spending their money on than a house on the moon and destroying society.
That's a helluva list, isn't it?! It's truly amazing to realize how the pace of discovery and invention has accelerated in our lifetimes.
Always great to notice how good things are. Thanks, Kevin, from someone who read you back when you were CalPundit.
a . . . doughnut ?
there are a lot of biomedical researchers. If they all show up, that would be a lot of dough.
Congratulations & applause from a fellow MMer. And thank you for sharing information about your disease so candidly and informatively. I’ve learned a lot from you. Here’s to another ten years, at the very least!
Hurray! And many morrrrrrrrrrre.
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Now THAT is a SOMETHINGBURGER. I'm constantly impressed by how productive you are despite your medical travails. Hope the CAR T-cell therapy works great!
So glad you're doing great. Here's to another decade going strong.
I got news for you -- scientists want beer. At least, my brand of scientists, physicists, do. I assume the others as well. I once attended an International Relativity Society meeting in Boulder, and we drank an entire ski lodge dry in 2 hours.
Ski lodges are pretty boring when the beer runs out.