2011
The Dalliance with Improved Healthcare
The 2011 probed both the acute/common and rare/neglected diseases that strip us of health, imagined the tsunami of diseases that are amassing for invasion at our borders, looked at the growing empowerment of groups of patients banding together to help themselves using the internet, and analyzed the possible impact of patent law and large data bases to restore urgency to the dialogue.
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Opening Remarks 2011
Dr. Larry Gold is the Founder and Chairman Emeritus of the Board, and former CEO of SomaLogic. Prior to SomaLogic, he also founded and was the Chairman of NeXagen, Inc., which later became NeXstar Pharmaceuticals, Inc. In 1999, NeXstar merged with Gilead Sciences, Inc. to form a global organization committed to the discovery, development and commercialization of novel products that treat infectious diseases.
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Health and Medical Problems Everywhere
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The Thousand Dollar Genome
Ten years ago, shortly after the publication of the first draft of the Human Genome Project, researchers coined the catchphrase “the $1,000 genome” designating the ambitious target to fully realize the fruits of human genomic research by means of routine genome sequencing. Remarkably, that goal is almost a reality. Companies are already sequencing and annotating complete human genomes for less...
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Cardiovascular Disease and Drug Discovery
Bleeding and blood clotting are the leading causes of mortality, and represent major areas of focus for drug discovery. Significant advances have been made in the treatment of bleeding disorders, such as hemophilia, where recombinant proteins supply the missing clotting factors. Thrombosis, as manifest in cardiovascular disease, stroke, and other hyper-coagulation disorders represents challenges of high risk and high reward...
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Transforming Prenatal Care: Personalized Medicine Begins in the Womb
Often times pregnancy is considered to be a natural process that should unfold with little medical intervention. Thus, prenatal care is largely observational consisting of growth measurements and monitoring for signs of pregnancy complications. One reason this should change is our growing understanding of the developmental origins of adult diseases. Low birthweight, a by-product of many pregnancy complications, is associated...
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Large Systems and Their Integration
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Before It Strikes: Viral Forecasting For Pandemic Prevention
Current global disease control efforts focus largely on attempting to stop pandemics after they have already emerged. This fire brigade approach, which generally involves drugs, vaccines, and behavioral change, has severe limitations. Just as we discovered in the 1960s that it is better to prevent heart attacks then try to treat them, over the next 50 years we will realize...
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Computational Bridges over the Chasms between Science, Medicine and Health
Mae West said, “Too much of a good thing can be marvelous.” So why hasn’t the torrent of molecular data produced by systems biology, the clearinghouses of computerized clinical records, and the explosion of health information available on the internet turned out to be so wonderful? The problem isn’t finding relevant information so much as making sense of all of...
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A Curious Collision: Innovation vs. Patent Protection in Health Care
Patents serve the Constitutional directive of creating a playing field promoting science and technology. Inventors are rewarded for publicly disclosing their inventions with a grant of exclusivity in their invention for a limited term, now 20 years less the (reasonable) time it takes the Patent Office to process the patent application. As with other political systems, the patent system, in...
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Healthcare on the Ground: New Challenges for Physicians
The global enterprise of human health has changed rapidly and radically over the past 25 years. Diverse forces are altering the landscape - economics, changing demographics, and technological breakthroughs shift the interests of the stakeholders responsible for keeping us healthy: patients, physicians, payers, policy makers, and innovators.
Our global health economy is growing faster than the gross domestic...
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Patient Driven Real Time Outcome Management and Research
Patients are closest to their health status. With well designed self-reporting scales, they can provide rich and detailed information about their illnesses, symptoms, co-morbidiies, treatments, and background. This information can be used to monitor clinical practice, adherence to guidelines, and even the effectiveness, and risks of treatments in real time.
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Neglected Diseases
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Neglected Diseases are All of Us
Rick’s Positive Exposure photo and video presentation explores the social and psychological experiences of people of all ages and ethno-cultural heritages living with genetic, physical and behavioral conditions. Rick’s presentation embraces our shared humanity and celebrates the richness and beauty of human diversity.
The lecture provides new opportunities to see individuals living with a genetic difference first and...
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Huntington’s as a Metaphor and a Serious Disease
In my presentation I will discuss with you my experience in unraveling the challenges presented by several diseases which are each caused by a common mechanism, the unstable expansion of a three base pair repeat in DNA including Huntington’s Disease, myotonic dystrophy and fragile X syndrome. I will visit the ways in which DNA sequence expansion impacts on the lives...
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Rare and Neglected Diseases: The Time is Now!
Traditionally, Mendelian (single gene) disorders have been categorized as ‘rare’ and considered ‘orphaned’ in more ways than one. In addition, diseases in emerging nations, that don’t affect developed nations, are called neglected diseases and are also victims of inattention. These distinctions, defined in legislation and policies in some nations, are not helpful in a number of ways – including for...
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Men, Women, Sex, and Power – How Health, Confidence and Pleasurable Living Support Sexual Desire
Maintaining sexual desire throughout life can bring angst, sadness, and confusion to men and women of any age and in any stage of life. This lecture applies a new paradigm to describe the necessary prerequisites for sustained sexual desire, health, and satisfaction – regardless of age or partnered status. Six markers of emotional well-being and a commitment to leading a...
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Healthcare Delivery
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The Problems, Premise, and Promise of Personalized Oncology
In the “Emperor of all Maladies” Mukherjee eloquently summarizes the utter complexity of this mélange of diseases described spuriously under the single label of “cancer.” Modern biology reveals that biological and patient heterogeneity, with all that implies, summarize the challenges facing both patients and their care givers. The heterogeneity is at times almost stultifying in degree and complexity, making it...
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Molecular Diagnosis and Prognosis for Cancers
Molecular analyses of cancers can reveal critical information about the particular mechanisms of initiation and progression of cancers and provide the foundation for clinical tests. There are several aims of such tests: correct diagnosis, earlier diagnosis, prognosis/likelihood of metastasis, responsiveness to specific therapies, and recurrence after successful treatments. Cancers are very heterogeneous in causation, progression, and risk of metastasis and...
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Psychiatry: Is It Different? If So, How?
For centuries, the mentally ill were regarded with a combination of awe and fearful superstition, predominantly the latter. The enlightenment introduced them to humane compassion but left them subject to both isolation and faddish remedies.
The prevalence of serious mental illness in the United States now exceeds 5% of the population. Less than half of those afflicted receive...
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How We Learn… and How We Don’t
Changes in the functional capacities of learners are visible manifestations of changes in the physical structure of the brain. Although we seldom think of learning experiences as brain-reorganization activities, they most certainly are precisely that. We will look at why formal education often fails to make substantive and lasting changes in how learners think and behave, and we’ll consider how...
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The Coming Worldwide Epidemic of Neurological Disorders, and What We’re Doing About It
The rapid aging of the population in most developed countries will eventually produce a world in which almost a third of its inhabitants will be over 60 years of age. Coincidentally, 60 is the age at which the incidence of neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s Disease, Alzheimer’s Disease and stroke begin to rise exponentially. Effective treatments are lacking for these...
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