health
There was a time, not so long ago, when medical
discoveries still struck like thunderbolts, specific
and dramatic. Alexander Fleming realized on
Sept. 28, 1928, that the spores growing in his
lab were penicillin, the first antibiotic. In 1953,
Jonas Salk explained the vaccine against polio
on a radio show.
It is a paradox of our age that medical advances
now accumulate at such a rate that a significant
challenge for the health community lies in just
keeping up. The technology for editing the
human genome was discovered only in 2012,
and is already being used to snip out the genetic
mutation responsible for sickle-cell anemia in
patients. For decades, harnessing the immune
system to fight cancer was a tantalizing idea, yet
over the past 10 years, nearly 20 new treatments
relying on novel ways to train immune cells to
target tumors have been approved, saving lives
INNOVATION
44
ACCESS
62
PREVENTION
84
