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2014

Embracing the Reptile Within: Head, Heart, & Healthcare


The 2014 symposium focused on emerging knowledge in science and medicine, and on how the brain’s capacity and limitations affect the progress for improving healthcare. Once again, the symposium illustrated, through presentations and dialogue, the importance of making the hard science completely understandable to the audience. Discussions of the intellectual, scientific, economic, and social aspects of healthcare were stimulated by agent provocateurs who challenged participants with interludes of deep thought about how we learn and act.

  • Big Health Issues

    • The Bugs are Winning in our Changing Global Health Landscape

      The conjunction of emerging infectious diseases, the rapid rise of resistance to antibiotic and antiviral drugs, and the sluggish pipeline for new anti-infectives puts us at the eye of a perfect storm. This talk will explore the environmental and societal challenges that are responsible for the global surge of novel pathogens as well as old pathogens in new places. How...

    • Bottlenecks in Evolution, Bottlenecks in Type 2 Diabetes

      We are in the midst of an unprecedented epidemic of obesity, which is accompanied by a type 2 diabetes epidemic. Whereas >80% of people with type 2 diabetes are obese, ~80% of obese people do not develop diabetes. My laboratory studies this dichotomy by searching for genes that confer susceptibility to type 2 diabetes. This involves genetic screens in obese...

    • Pursuing the Placebo Effect

      This talk will emphasize clinical research into placebo effects and discuss several experiments that Ted Kaptchuk has led. The talk will present studies that suggest that the ritual of therapy can be administered in a manner analogous to dose dependence (BMJ 2008), that placebo outcomes may not be dependent on deception or concealment (PloS One 2010), that placebo responses may...

    • What Can Galapagos Teach Us About Innovation?

      Off the coast of the islands of Galapagos, new life and new species are created there at a remarkable pace. It is Nature’s platform for innovation. Where is its analog in the man-made world? What are the catalytic conditions that make disruptive innovation happen? We will use the metaphor of nature to propose a framework for innovation.

      We...

  • The Head

  • The Heart

  • Action

    • Giving the Patient a Choice: Democratizing Medical Service

      With the expansion of healthcare that is attendant on the passage of the Affordable Care Act and the aging of the population generally as the baby boomers hit 65 at the rate of 10,000 per day, there will be a premium on providing high quality, readily accessible, affordable healthcare. This presentation will look at the emergence of highly effective healthcare...

    • Designing for Patient Centered Care When There Is No Cure

      Palliative Care medicine was not a field or a specialty in the 1980s. Advocates of such end of life care, often inspired by the then emerging hospice movement, struggled to bring palliative care into hospitals and cancer clinics. Their efforts frequently faced reluctance, even resistance, from medical professionals who lived in a culture of treatment and cure. This clash of...

    • Logic, Science, Death, and Trolley Safety

      Tom Cathcart will explore the intriguing connections between 1) logic, 2) science, 3) death, and 4) trolley safety, while demonstrating how to monetize a 1961 bachelor’s degree in philosophy in today’s global economy.

    • Changing Minds: You Don’t Know the Half of It

      From inside our own consciousness, it seems to us that our thinking and behavior follow a somewhat linear progression in which we perceive the world around us, gather information, interpret what we perceive, decide, and act. From this perspective it’s possible to believe that if we all had access to the same information (and understood it) we’d all reach the...

    • Changing Minds: You Don’t Know the Half of It

      From inside our own consciousness, it seems to us that our thinking and behavior follow a somewhat linear progression in which we perceive the world around us, gather information, interpret what we perceive, decide, and act. From this perspective it’s possible to believe that if we all had access to the same information (and understood it) we’d all reach the...

    • Closing Remarks 2014

      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.