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Asked by anon-220169 to David on 3 Jun 2019.
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David Wilson answered on 3 Jun 2019:
I’ve done a lot of work to try and understand a number of diseases such as Muscular Dystrophy and Liver disease.
For a lot of scientists, curing or preventing a disease is really motivating but it can take many years of hard work to discover treatments. This is never the result of one person it takes hundreds of people, probably more in laboratories and hospitals around the world working together before a treatment can be found.
I like to think that the work I do contributes to our understanding of a disease and in some way will help those that suffer from them but I probably wont know for sure for a long time.
As a bonus answer, I am a trained First Aider, if you ever want the chance to save someones life then learning some basic skills such as CPR is a great way to do this.
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Comments
Ettie commented on :
Great question – yes in a number of different/ tangential ways.
During my gap year I worked on developing a piece of military equipment that has gone on to save lots of lives. I met someone whose friends life had been saved.
Now I work on predicting the spread of disease, which is used to inform government policy on disease prevention. I like to think this could have a huge impact and save lots of peoples lives.
Anabel commented on :
Great question Maddie – very much like David’s answer, I also study a group of diseases – in my case, ‘Mitochondrial Disorders’, which are caused by problems in our cells’ energy-making machinery, the mitochondria. These are like batteries in your cells that turn particles from the food that you eat (fuel) into a substance called ATP (which is our usable cellular energy molecule). This ATP is broken down by lots of different types of proteins to release chemical energy that the protein then uses to function. This breakdown of ATP happens all the time by all the cells in your body! It allows you to walk, think, speak, dance or run around! Patients with mitochondrial disorders have problems mostly with tissues and organs that require lots of energy to function, like the brain, liver, skeletal muscles, heart and eyes. I try to understand what happens in people with mitochondrial disorders that causes the mitochondria not to make ATP very well, with the hope that this understanding will allow for targeted gene or molecular therapies for the patients! So far, I’ve figured out the problem responsible for two cases of mitochondrial disorders (one in a 20 year old lady, and the other in a 6 year old boy). They both had genetic mutations (changes in their DNA) that ultimately caused their mitochondria to not work properly, and now that we know the problem their doctors can better target and treat their disorders. In future, if other patients are found to have the same type of problem, they may benefit hugely by there being a better understanding and established treatment for that particular problem. So to answer your question, I ‘saved’ these people through science by better understanding (at the most basic level) the reason for their illness.
But it’s important to say that research is definitely playing the ‘long game’. A doctor or a nurse will have a more day-to-day experience of ‘saving’ people, but research scientists helps people indirectly by understanding the problems for the many types of disorders and diseases there are. Regardless, it is a very fulfilling job :-).
And not related to science at all, but I once pushed my best friend out of the way of a rogue firework that was coming straight for her! That felt much more of an adrenaline rush than saving someone ‘through science’!
Matthew commented on :
Most certainly. Prior to working in research, I was working in Hospital laboratories where I would be completing all the tests people have when they get admitted into hospital. Part of my role was to look at a patients results and add any extra tests that I thought might be needed and sometimes this would show something that would need to be fixed right away otherwise the patient might have died.
Marianne commented on :
It’s hard to know for some scientists whether we are saving lives as we work so early on in the process of developing treatments for disease. For example I work on Rett Syndrome, which is a neurodevelopmental disease, but I work with cells that grow in dishes and I’m trying to find out how they behave differently in Rett Syndrome. Once (or if) I find a difference, other scientists would maybe study it in live animals, as these are closer to us physiologically than cells growing in dishes. If they find a treatment that can reverse symptoms in animals with the disease then this could maybe go on to clinical trial – where a drug or treatment is studied in human patients. This whole process can take at least a decade and I’m working at the very beginning! But hopefully, eventually, my research might be part of finding a treatment one day!
Shobhana commented on :
Hi Maddie04! Thanks for the great question. I’ve had some practical experience of using science to help save lives as a doctor – we always work in a team in a hospital, so it really is a team effort. It’s incredible when you see scientific discoveries like vaccines and antibiotics working to save patients’ lives. The scientists who discover these cures are amazing! I would love to be a scientist like that – however I do a different type of research called clinical research. I am hoping the research I’m doing at the moment will help save women’s lives. I’m training village healthcare workers to identify pregnant women with complicated pregnancies who might be at risk of dying in pregnancy and childbirth (and in the years that follow), using mobile technology. I’ll be able to let you know in a couple of years if it has helped anyone!
Rebecca commented on :
As a doctor, I like to think that every day I am using science to save lives, although sometimes indirectly. Most medicines that we prescribe have a scientific basis for their use and although it might not have been me who discovered them, I like to try and understand why and how they are working, and the science behind why we have chosen to use that medicine.
Nina commented on :
As a clinician scientist I am very lucky to have the chance to use my skills directly to impact on animal patient lives (when working in the clinic), and also indirectly benefit both human and animal health through the science that I do in the lab. Whether working in the hospital or in the lab, team work is essential; certainly I have contributed to saving the lives of many patients, with the support of other people (vets, veterinary nurses, animal technicians, imaging experts). The ‘big picture’ of my laboratory work is to better understand how brain cell clocks work so that we can keep brains healthier for longer, or make them better able to cope with injury. This could have broad impact on a wide range of brain diseases, from acute injury (stroke, brain trauma, surgery) to more chronic diseases such as dementia, epilepsy, brain tumours, neurodevelopmental disorders, and mental illness. Helping patients in the clinic is very rewarding when their condition is treatable, but this is often not the case for brain disorders, so although its great to be able to help a few patients with ‘fast’ results, a huge drive for me is to do the basic science that (although much slower) will one day lead to discoveries that help many more patients with disorders for which we currently have no effective treatments. There is much overlap between humans and animals when it comes to these ‘difficult to treat’ problems of the brain, so by working between three sectors (human and veterinary medicine and basic science), and bringing together experts in these areas, I hope to make a lasting contribution to brain health. Science is the foundation of medicine, but practising medicine also has an ‘art’ to it that comes with experience (and cannot be learnt in a textbook). Definitely for most vets, science is part of everyday life in the clinic; sometimes the decisions we make based on looking at a patient sample down a microscope, or running a test on their blood can be life-saving. In neurology (the specialist branch of medicine that deals with the nervous system) a very quick and satisfying example would be to make a diagnosis of meningitis (inflammation of the tissue layers surrounding the brain and spinal cord) by looking at a patient sample of cerebrospinal fluid (‘spinal tap’) down a microscope – if left untreated, meningitis can be fatal; if we get the diagnosis right and treat quickly, patients can make a full recovery. There’s all sorts of science in the clinic – plenty of physics in understanding how medical imaging and anaesthetic machines work, plenty of chemistry in understanding how laboratory tests and drugs work, plenty of maths in getting drug doses right! Funny thing in the research lab now is that I’m using some of the maths/physics/chemistry I learnt at school that I haven’t needed for 20 years – so you never know when it might come in handy!
Thiloka commented on :
This is a great question because you are getting down to one of the fundamental needs for science- to save lives! Like Rebecca, I would have to say that I think science helped save lives on a daily basis while I was working in clinical Paediatrics. Here is an example- we use our scientific knowledge about how antibiotics work to prescribe them appropriately for patients with an infection, and we test the patient to see which bug is causing that infection so that we can tailor the antibiotic choice. Penicillin came into play in 1928, before then, children and elderly especially would die of infections that are easily treated now such as chest infections or skin infections! Although the discovery of penicillin was ‘accidental’, it required a scientist (Professor Fleming) who was investigating bacteria which cause infections and skilled at recognising what was in those petri dishes to come up with that eureka moment! Also, without science hospitals would not be as effective as they are now, for instance, we wouldn’t have the life saving equipment we use nowadays such as the resuscitation machines for those really scary moments when a patient is about to die. So, yes, science definitely helps us save lives daily.
Alex commented on :
Not directly, but I like to think that the involvement I have had in designing and planning clinical trials results in more patients ending up with a treatment that could potentially save or prolong their life. When they find a new drug or treatment works, and will become available on the NHS, it’s cool to see the results of these clinical trials in the news because you feel part of that journey and hope that many future patients will benefit from the work you did.