Some of the best stories we do...
by e.j. becker
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posted Jan 17 2012 12:07PM
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...are medical stories. New research is always popping up. Clinical trials are constantly revealing new insights, new cures, new hope. This morning, the story was about a tracheal transplant -- not from another human -- made in the lab.
But sitting at the anchor desk every morning (and rarely does a morning go by when we don't have some kind of medical story to talk about) so many advances, diseases, results and miracles-in-waiting run together. And surely you've noticed mice are always involved. (Just once, I wanna see a mouse rolled out in a tiny little wheelchair next to the human subject who's become the supposed star of press conference (if only he could get a word in). Poor little mice. They don't get no respect.)
Ellen and I often joke that we're in the wrong business, that we should be in the business of studies, i.e. getting money for the inane research projects that often show up in the news. Well here's a study just waiting to be done: number and type of articles/stories on a particular medical study published/broadcast touting potential medical breakthroughs prior to FDA or comparable approval. What I'd really like to know: how many of the treatments that "may be available to human patients in as little as 5 years," actually were available in what timeframe. And of those that weren't, what happened? Why can't I have that earlobe transplant? It looked fine on the rat.
While I understand the deliberate nature of medical science, it often seems so slow I find myself wondering (and bet listeners do too) if we will actually live to see the amazing breakthrough that will stop my body from aging while preventing Alzheimer's, gout and heart attacks after loud noises from the hot water tank between 2-3 a.m. on Wednesdays while regrowing the hair on my big toes. All in one little pill, of course.
With my luck, if I do live that long (and the hair on my toes can be saved), it'll be a suppository.
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