Science has come up with some amazing answers to an array of daunting problems. Researchers are moving closer to effective treatments for cancer and Alzheimer’s and diseases caused by assaults from our own immune systems. Innovators are exploring bold new approaches to stroke–a problem that kills more than 5 million people every year.
In medical research, progress is tentative and sometimes illusory. There are exciting new ways to think about depression, but early attempts to turn these ideas into drugs have yet to succeed. Women this year fled from hormone treatment as new studies confirmed that the widely used therapy has serious risks. Experts still disagreed about how best to deploy cholesterol-reducing drugs–and whether offering free antiretroviral drugs is enough to solve Africa’s AIDS epidemic.
What the year in medicine revealed was this: the biggest health challenges are often not the technical ones. Controlling AIDS now depends more on will than ways. Obesity, one of the biggest health crises facing the world, may be a disease, but curing it will require not just a new generation of pills, but changes in our own lives.
title: “Health 2003 The Top Ten” ShowToc: true date: “2023-02-01” author: “Richard Reid”
Science has come up with some amazing answers to an array of daunting problems. Death rates from AIDS are falling whenever people have access to state-of-the art drugs. Researchers are moving closer to effective treatments for cancer and Alzheimer’s. Innovators are exploring bold new approaches to stroke–a problem that kills 130,000 Americans every year.
In medical research, progress is tentative and sometimes illusory. There are exciting new ways to think about depression, but early attempts to turn these ideas into drugs have yet to succeed. Women this year fled from hormone treatment as new studies confirmed that the widely used therapy has serious risks. Experts still disagreed about how best to deploy cholesterol-reducing drugs–and whether to put silicone breast implants back on the market.
What the year in medicine revealed was this: the biggest health challenges are often not the technical ones. Controlling AIDS now depends more on will than ways. Obesity, the biggest health crisis facing the country, may be a disease, but curing it will require not just a new generation of pills, but changes in our own lives.
