In this video geneticist and physician Francis Collins talks about one of the main causes of death in our world, sicknesses,and how we need to improve our medicines to stop them. In the world we live in today more and more diseases as well as medicines are being discovered. Diseases not all of them being curable out weigh the medicines and vaccines we have to protect against them and that is what Francis Collins is establishing in this TED talk. What really caught my attention while I was watching this video is the realization of how much I and probably many other people don't realize about the abundance of diseases that exist on this planet. Scientist have discovered the molecular basis of about 4,000 diseases but out of those 4,000 the treatments and cures found for them are only about 250 and that big gap just solidifies Francis's claim that we need to improve and make are drugs better.
I found this video Interesting because of how informational it was. I have learned that the reason for the slow moving processes of these cures and treatments are mostly because the amounts of money that goes into it.Research,tests,scientific experiments,etc., millions and billions of money is all going towards these drugs that still have a very low chance of becoming successful. This makes it not only risky but time consuming as well because there is no guarantee in a successful breakthrough. In this Ted talk Collins says that it can take up to 14 years for only 1 drug approval and in those fourteen years you could spend about a billion dollars, but Collins does not believe it should cost that much, in fact he goes on about saying how we can take the drugs we have now and change there genomes and in a way trick them into becoming the medicines we need, also in doing so can cost researchers about or even less then 10,000 dollars. From this video I learned that there are many medicines that that were created for one purpose but worked substantially better for another.For example, a drug called AZT was originally created for cancer but soon after was noticed that it didn't work so well so geneticist experimented on it and out of that drug they were able to create an antibiotic for HIV/AIDS. The reconstruction of the current drugs we have now can lead to medical breakthroughs that we thought could never be reached and that is what I think Collins is saying in this TED talk.
I love how Francis Collins raps up his video by saying " we need talent" he says this because we now live in an era were technology is rapidly advancing from how it was long ago. In this world we need bright and hard working people that can solve the worlds biggest problems because we live in a advanced society were anyone is just about capable of doing something wonderful or creating something that will impact the lives of many people around the world. This video is really informational and really made me think of how simple it can be to make a big change if your interested and want to know more for yourself click here.