Oct 4th, 2007
Aspen Health Forum today
First full day of the 3-day conference, some highlights from the panels I attended (a small fraction of the incredible variety offered):
UPDATE (October 8th, 2007): you can find a full write-up of my impressions of the 3-day conference at 10 Highlights from the Aspen Health Forum and a very timely post on The Alfred Nobel legacy: 2007 Nobel Prizes.
- 2 Nobel Prize Laureates (Peter Agre, Michael Bishop), talking about their lives and careers trying to demystify what it takes to be a scientist and to win a Nobel Prize. Both are grateful to the taxpayers dollars that funded their research, and insist we must do a better job at explaining the scientific process to society at large. Both proud of having attended small liberal arts colleges, and having evolved from there, fueled by their personal curiosity and unpredictable, serendipitous paths, into launching new scientific and medical fields. Bishop lists a number of times where he made decisions that were considered "career suicides" by some mentors and colleagues, and mentions "I was confused" around 15 times in 15 minutes. Demystifying, and inspiring.
- Some of their policy recommendations to improve the development of good scientists: 1) start early in the school system with hands-on experiments, 2) foster a spirit of free inquiry by allowing flexible funding (i.e., don't micromanage scientists or their labs), 3) pay more attention to a rigorous process driven by personal curiosity than to achieving specific outcomes-they feel many young scientists have too much pressure on their shoulders to achieve too much too quickly.
- UCSF's Regis Kelly provides a wonderful overview of neuroimaging, learning and neuroplasticity, and highlights how many biologists are moving from thinking "how genes make things happen" to "how systems work", given than in humans manipulating just one gene may trigger changes in 500 other genes.
- Another UCSF researcher shows her research on how disabling one specific gen in a worm can double that worm's lifespan, and mentions how that study has been replicated with fruit flies and mice, and could, conceptually, help humans live longer & healthy lives.
- A session on the Mind & the Brain where we see the evolutionary trade-off of a genetic variation: having one specific mutation of the COMT gene gives, on average, better attentional control and memory, but at the cost of being less resistance to stress and lower pain threshold. The presenter summarizes it by saying that some human beings seem predisposed (not destined to) being warriors, and others...worriers.
- A panel on scientific investments featuring an honest debate on several broken areas: the process from basic research to applications (since pharma companies pay too much emphasis on multi-billion drugs), health care delivery, a peer-review process that concentrates too much funding on too few researchers, how to attract and retain young researchers, the lack of accountability and ROI measurement of the $29b spent by the NIH. Apparent consensus that science both needs more money but will only get it once it cleans its own house.
- Bill Frist provides a good overview on the risks of global zootic diseases (transmitted between humans and animals) advocating for a "one health, one medicine" movement to deal with increasing epidemic risks. 2 very interesting data points: at any one moment, there are 500,000 people flying worldwide. In a year, airlines transport the equivalent of 2 billion passengers.
- The premier of the PBS program "The Mysterious Human Heart" that will soon be released. Fascinating to see the miracle of daily life, and the amazing progress of medical science in helping people with heart conditions. Also, the dark side of progress: during the discussion, a doctor mentions that some of the life-threatening heart problems mentioned in the program actually can derive as side-effects from medication such as ADD/ ADHD stimulants.
UPDATE (October 8th, 2007): you can find a full write-up of my impressions of the 3-day conference at 10 Highlights from the Aspen Health Forum and a very timely post on The Alfred Nobel legacy: 2007 Nobel Prizes.
[...] Alvaro Fernandez of SharpBrains explores what you can do to become happier by examining four key aspects --- "you", "can", "do", and "happier" --- from a neuropsychological perspective. He also presents 10 highlights from the 2007 Aspen Health Forum. [...]
Criteria of the AFSC Nobel Peace Prize Nominating Committee:
1. The candidate’s commitment to nonviolent methods.
2. The quality of the candidate as a person and of her/his sustained contribution to peace.
3. The candidate’s work on issues of peace, justice, human dignity, and the integrity of the environment.
4. The candidate’s possession of a world view and/or global impact as opposed to a parochial concern.
All else is vanity.
Hello James, I am afraid I am missing your point.
Have you read Alfred Nobel's will, linked above?
What was in Alfred Nobel's will matters little - what the AFSC Nobel Peace Prize Nominating Committee DOES matters more. Go and look - I did!